MARY CONWAY revels in a powerful reminder that human lives are not defined by physical perfection
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Not the whole story
Some of the much-loved Dr Seuss children's books have been withdrawn after their publishers deemed them to be racist. That may be so, says CHRIS ORLET, but the wider picture provides even more cause for concern
PERNICIOUS: Some of the titles withdrawn from bookshops and Dr Seuss cartoon of a Japanese man handing out TNT explosives to fellow Japanese US citizens
PAUL DONOVAN recommends the fine performances in this account of the pre-war meeting between the US president and the British king
TECLYN AROD relishes an intimate celebration of jazz improvisation that mixes local and national musicians
The missing sister, the vengeful WAG, cruise ship claustrophobia, and reanimated Avengers
Three great releases of lost concerts by Duke Ellington Orchestra, John Taylor & Stan Sulzman, and Joe Henderson
To rescue Kahlo from the clutches of the corporate art market, we need to acknowledge the overt and covert political dimensions of the work, demands GAVIN O’TOOLE
A FRIEND delights in sending me news stories that demonstrate what he says are the excesses of “liberalism.” One recent article that arrived in my inbox concerned Dr Seuss Enterprises’s decision to halt publication of six children’s books it now believes contain racist imagery.
“I didn’t realise Dr Seuss made us all racists,” he quipped. As usual, a flippant retort to a flippant remark moves the conversation nowhere. One has to dig a bit deeper.
The newly delisted books — And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street, If I Ran the Zoo, McElligot’s Pool, On Beyond Zebra!, The Cat’s Quizzer — were all created between 1935 and 1976, a time when racist imagery in cartoons was as common as giant noses.
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