The author who penned iconic children's books under the alias Dr. Seuss also wrote cartoons that were blatantly racist and misogynistic, a shocking new book reveals. In his earlier works Theodor Geisel, who wrote "The Cat In The Hat" and many other famous titles, depicted black people as slaves in white-owned department stores, used the "n" word, and showed Japanese Americans receiving explosives to bomb the U.S. during the Second World War, The Daily Mail reported.
In a magazine editorial piece, Geisel also noted there was nothing "more pleasant than to see five husky college men make some silly girls realize how insignificant and helpless they are."
These revelations are made in a new book, "Becoming Dr. Seuss: Theodor Geisel and the Making of an American Imagination" by Brian Jay Jones. The upcoming book documents Geisel's career as an editor, cartoonist and author, while re-examining his earlier work.
In one particularly vile cartoon Geisel drew a department store and one of the rooms displayed a group of black people standing in front of a shopper. A sign on the wall read: "Take Home a High-Grade N**** [censored by Newsmax] For Your Woodpile!"
Geisel's career began at student magazine Jack-O-Lantern, where he wrote cartoons and humorous pieces. During his time with the publication, Geisel often made women the subject of his jokes for "cheap laughs," according to Jones. He later moved to Massachusetts to pursue a full-time career as a cartoonist for satirical magazines.
During those times, he often penned crude cartoons that were racist and misogynistic. He later tried to explain it away in an interview in 1987 in which he noted that it was "just the way things were 50 years ago," The Daily Mail reported. Jones noted, of the thousands of cartoons Geisel drew, a "small number were truly racially insensitive" and more of them were "probably more misogynistic cartoons and cartoons about drinking."
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