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Oh, the places people will go to cancel “cancel culture.”
After news hit this week that six Dr. Seuss books featuring racist and insensitive imagery will no longer be published, copies of these books popped up on resale sites like eBay EBAY, -2.31% and Amazon.com AMZN, -0.91% for thousands of dollars.
The titles include: “And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street,” “If I Ran the Zoo,” “McElligot’s Pool,” “On Beyond Zebra!,” “Scrambled Eggs Super!,” and “The Cat’s Quizzer.” And a copy of “Mulberry Street” alone was being hawked on eBay on Thursday for $1,500. On Amazon, hardcover copies of “If I Ran the Zoo” start at $789 and climb to $5,000.
Six discontinued Dr. Seuss books are selling for thousands on eBay and Amazon.
eBay screenshot
Indeed, while an eBay spokeswoman told the Wall Street Journal that the company is “currently sweeping our marketplace to remove these items,” hundreds of sellers could still be found selling editions of what they described as the “banned” or “canceled” Dr. Seuss books on eBay for hundreds of bucks on Thursday afternoon. One was offering all six of the books books for $1,110, which had several bids.
But saying the books have been “banned,” or that Dr. Seuss has been “canceled,” is a misnomer.
First, Dr. Seuss Enterprises, the entertainment company that manages the estate of late children’s book author Theodor Seuss Geisel, aka Dr. Seuss, is the entity that decided to stop licensing and publishing those particular titles in the first place. “These books portray people in ways that are hurtful and wrong,” Dr. Seuss Enterprises explained in a statement released Monday, which coincided with Geisel’s birthday and Read Across America Day.
What’s more, after a Virginia school district went viral for reportedly banning Dr. Seuss books, it clarified in a statement that Dr.Seuss books are still available in its libraries and classes. The school had simply decided to distance Read Across America Day from Dr. Seuss’s birthday due to the “strong racial undertones” in some of the books that he wrote and illustrated.
Read more: Dr. Seuss is not canceled — but six of his books are being shelved over racist images
Plus, the rhyming writer’s estate raked in $33 million in 2020 thanks to on-screen adaptations like “Green Eggs and Ham” for Netflix NFLX, -1.81%, and a three-movie Warner Bros. deal featuring characters from “The Cat in the Hat” and the world of “Oh, the Places You’ll Go!”
And even if eBay does manage to delist all of the discontinued Dr. Seuss books, you can probably still find them on Amazon and Mercari.
Meanwhile, as of late Thursday, nine of Amazon’s top 10 bestselling books (updated hourly) were Dr. Seuss titles — though not the six that will be discontinued.
