It seems that President Biden removed the mentions of Dr. Seuss from “Read Across America Day” amid examination of the alleged “racial subtleties” in whimsical children’s stories.
“Read Across America Day”, founded by the National Educational Association in 1998 as a way to promote children’s reading, is even celebrated on the author’s birthday on March 2.
In his presidential proclamation, Biden noted that “for many Americans, the path to literacy begins with storytelling in their school classroom,” USA Today reported.
But unlike his two predecessors, former presidents Donald Trump and Barack Obama, Biden did not mention Dr. Seuss.
The move comes at a time when Dr. Seuss’s work has generated controversy following a study that highlighted the lack of diversity between the author’s characters.
“Of the 2,240 (identified) human characters, there are forty-five colored characters representing 2% of the total number of human characters,” according to a 2019 study by Conscious Kid’s Library and the University of California, which examined 50 from Dr. Seuss’s Books.
Last week, a school district in Virginia ordered teachers to avoid “connecting Read Across America Day with Dr. Seuss,” because of recent research that has “revealed strong racial subtleties” in many of the author’s books.