In some versions of Cinderella, her wicked stepsisters, at their wicked mother’s insistence, cut off parts of their feet in order to fit into the glass slipper. And then, the stupid Prince Charmhead doesn’t notice until talking doves and pidgeons point out on the way to Charmhead Castle, “There’s blood in the shoe!”
And of course the Prince is so dense that he goes through this particular ordeal twice with the two wicked stepsisters.
He doesn’t get it right until Cindy puts the slipper on without any blood spurting that gets noticed by talking birds.
Dang! Prince Charmhead is a real dumbhead. What kind of a local ruler would a man be if he picks the love of his life simply because she fits a shoe he likes?
But it is obvious that fairytales, especially the old ones that have been retold by a lot of fairly stupid people and changed with each new teller, deserve most of the criticism they receive.
My current work in progress is a fairytale (in that it is thoroughly infested by many kinds of fairies, mostly the little three-inch-or-smaller kind.) It is called The Necromancer’s Apprentice.
The book is a comedy, meant primarily to entertain and be funny, though. like Shakespeare’s comedies, it is intended to demonstrate themes of romance and love, and how they percolate emotionally in spite of obstacles (and the manipulations of evil fairies.)
But it will undoubtedly get criticized for its exploitation of fairies. Especially young girl fairies who agreed to pose nude for illustrations in the book.
This will not, however, be fully justified. I, as the artist, paid each nude fairy model a fair wage. Sure, it was mostly in pennies. But they are all between two and three inches in height. A penny is heavy and unwieldy for tiny arms to carry. And a penny buys a lot in Gerry-go-Gompert’s General Store for Sylphs, Elves, and Butterfly Children (no Gobbuluns allowed!)
And it you consider the context of a fairytale trying to portray fairies as they really are, you have to remember that Butterfly Children normally don’t wear clothing because it interferes with the flight of delicate butterfly wings. And all forms of actual fairy-kind are immune to heat and cold, and don’t need clothing for those reasons.
On top of that, most fairies believe in naturism and nudism as a healthy lifestyle and don’t object when I write a novel that promotes that idea a little bit.
So, once I am finished with this book, I am almost certain that it will be just as controversial as Little Red Riding Hood who climbs into Grandma’s bed with a big bad wolf, or Snow White who lives alone in the woods with seven little single men. But controversy can be a good thing for a story. Readers love a lurid tale. Even when the subjects are less than three inches tall.
Catch a Falling Star 
“Oh, no! Not Dr. Seuss!”
“And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street,” “The Cat’s Quizzer,” “If I Ran the Zoo,” “McElligot’s Pool,” “On Beyond Zebra!” and “Scrambled Eggs Super!”
Apparently, according to conservative-minded friends and cousins on Facebook, evil liberal Democrats are out to cancel and get rid of Dr. Seuss. They are taking seriously the warnings of the good-hearted, common-sense broadcasters at OAN and Fox News and rushing out to buy copies of Cat in the Hat, Horton Hears a Who, Green Eggs and Ham, and Oh, the Places You’ll Go before the communist-leaning book-burning enemies of the people get ahold of them.
I say to this dire warning, “Okay! Great! Buy every wonderful Dr. Seuss book you can get your hands on! That’s the right thing to do!”
But I would be remiss in my duty not to also say, “Don’t spend a thousand dollars on e-Bay to get a copy of And to Think that I Saw It on Mulberry Street.“
Let me say this, as a teacher who taught reading skills in all of my thirty-one years as a public school teacher, I always made use of Dr. Seuss books whenever and wherever possible, even reading Fox in Sox aloud to gifted students (and reading those tongue-tying tongue-twizzlers as fast as it is possible to read aloud without wrapping my tongue around my eye teeth and crashing into my molars because I couldn’t see what I was saying.) (Which the kids always found profoundly entertaining.) And I celebrated Dr. Seuss’s birthday every March since that became a thing in 1988.
But I also think that we have to recognize that Theodore Seuss Geisel, Dr. Seuss, is a man from a different time. Some of the tropes and techniques he learned and employed in the 1940s as a political cartoonist and ad illustrator are no longer appropriate in the time of George Floyd and Asians being attacked over the “Wuhan Kung Flu.”
Remember, his cartoon skills were developed back when America was fighting propaganda wars with the Axis powers.
So, in some of his works, he may have been guilty of some outdated thinking and is unintentionally racist in some of the things he cartooned and thought were funny.
And of the books that will no longer be published, I admit that I read and enjoyed If I Ran the Zoo while I was learning to read in the first grade. And I think I read McElligot’s Pool in school in 1965, but I don’t really remember what was down there at the bottom under the protagonist’s fishhook. I looked up a hard-to-find copy of And to Think That I Saw it on Mulberry Street in 2009, and saw that it was not really right for my ESL class at that time. The other three controversial books I haven’t even heard of before this whole thing first outraged Fox News reporters. These six books were not available for purchase from either Barnes and Noble or the Dr. Seuss website before the controversy.
So, I love Dr. Seuss. But I am not worried. Democrats and liberals like me are not trying to do away with Dr. Seuss. In fact, Random House publishers are not even the ones who decided. Dr. Seuss Enterprises, the business that preserves and protects the author’s legacy, announced it would cease sales of these books. So, this is purely editorial in nature and certainly within the rights of Dr. Seuss’s family, friends, and promoters to do.
But by all means, buy up more Dr. Seuss books! Give them to kids you care about! I can’t think of anything I would rather have conservatives, Republicans, and Fox News viewers doing than reading about Horton, the Grinch, Sam-I-Am. and Daisy-head Maisy.
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