President Joe Biden’s proclamation for “Read Across America Day” appeared to un-cancel famed children’s author Dr. Seuss, after he was completely excluded from the proclamation in 2021.
“For many young Americans, the path to literacy begins with treasured and timeless traditions: being read to at bedtime, gathering in classrooms for story time, and attending events at local libraries with family and friends,” Biden said in his proclamation. “Children’s classics such as Dr. Seuss’ ‘Green Eggs and Ham’ and ‘Oh, the Places You’ll Go!’ have inspired a passion for reading and endless creativity that spans generations.”
Biden issued the annual proclamation Tuesday ahead of the actual celebration of Read Across America Day, which was founded in 1998 by the National Education Association in honor of Dr. Seuss’s birthday. Seuss, whose real name is Theodor Seuss Geisel, was born on March 2, 1904, and passed away in 1991. Presidential proclamations declaring the celebration have been issued by former Presidents Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and Donald Trump, with most mentioning Seuss by name. But Biden drew fierce criticism after his 2021 proclamation made no mention of Seuss at all. The Daily Wire’s Cabot Phillips wrote at the time:
As part of “Read Across America Day,” Joe Biden recently took part in an annual presidential tradition, unveiling his book list for the country’s school children.
Notably absent from the list was the very author whose birthday the celebration commemorates: Dr. Seuss.
The conspicuous omission comes as the woke mob, alongside local school districts, pushes to “cancel” his work for supposedly being replete with “racial undertones” not conducive for “culturally responsive” learning. The company which controls Dr. Seuss’s estate even ceased publication of six books they found to be particularly “hurtful.”
Though the Biden administration didn’t give a specific reason for keeping Dr. Seuss from the list, if you believe they happened to omit the most popular children’s author in American history, on the holiday set on his birthday by accident, and not for fear of offending the outrage mob, you’re living in a world as outlandish and fantastical as one of Seuss’s creations.
The Biden administration has tacitly canceled Dr. Seuss because some of his work doesn’t live up to their modern day “woke” standards.
Biden’s omission of Seuss in his 2021 proclamation followed news that the Loudoun County Public Schools district in Virginia announced that it would no longer recognize Dr. Seuss in its celebration of Read Across America Day. An announcement from the district instructed schools to avoid “connecting Read Across America Day with Dr. Seuss,” saying that his books contained “racial undertones” that are not suitable for “culturally responsive” learning.
The District’s decision came after a left-wing teachers’ organization called Learning for Justice published an article claiming that Dr. Seuss’s works did not contain enough characters of color, and those characters were often “‘presented in subservient, exotified, or dehumanized roles,’” to the white characters.
In reaction, Dr. Seuss Enterprises, which manages the author’s estate, announced that it would discontinue the publication of six books that contained particularly overt racial imagery. Online auction site eBay also announced it would ban sales of the discontinued books, and the Chicago Public Library pulled the books from its shelves in response as well.