Unpublished sketches by Dr. Seuss will serve as inspiration for a new series of children’s books that will be written and illustrated by a diverse group of emerging artists, the company that monitors the author’s legacy said on Wednesday.
The line of books will be released under the name Seuss Studios, a new project by Dr. Seuss Enterprises, which will publish at least two original books a year starting in 2023, a company spokeswoman said in a statement.
Although the list of authors and illustrators who will work on the books is still being finalized, the company said they will be of different backgrounds and will include people of color.
The announcement comes a year after Dr. Suz Enterprises said six books written by Theodore Seuss Geisel under the pseudonym Dr. Seuss will no longer be published due to the use of images depicting people “in ways that are hurtful and wrong. “
In “And I Think I Saw Him on Mulberry Street,” for example, a character described as “Chinese” has eyeliner, wears a pointed hat, and carries chopsticks and a bowl of rice. Two characters in “If I Flee the Zoo” are from the “African island of Yerka” and are depicted as shirtless, without shoes and monkeys.
Susan Brand, President and CEO of Dr. Seuss Enterprises said in a statement that the new venture “will help us ensure that Dr. Seuss’ images live in the best possible way – and in a new way – for future readers.”
The legacy of Dr. Seuss, who died in 1991 and entertains millions of children around the world with fantastic tales, often related to moral lessons, has been carefully considered in recent years. The decision to withdraw the six headlines was the subject of a stalemate in cable news and sparked complaints of a “culture of annulment” from prominent conservatives.
However, others welcomed the manor’s decision to stop selling some of Dr. Seuss’s work.
“I applauded the decision to do this and take the harmful things out of the market,” Linda Klaassen, director of special collections at the University of California, San Diego, said Wednesday.
The university houses the collection of Dr. Seuss – hundreds of unpublished sketches, which are stored in the archives of the school library.
Behind locked doors and inside a room with its own security system, there are about 20 large steel drawers, each holding unpublished sketches by Dr. Seuss, tucked away in special folders and sleeves, Ms. Klaassen said.
There are about 750 of these sketches. Ms Claassen said she and Ms Brand and her team often look at drawers for inspiration and project ideas. Some of the sketches will serve as a germ for a new book idea for future artists to be used for the project.
One of the unprecedented illustrations released Wednesday shows three colorful, smiling hummingbirds. The other is a mouse-like creature with fuzzy, elongated ears.
“A lot of them you can say were book ideas because there were stories,” Ms. Klaassen said.
But Dr. Seuss was also a “sworn sketchbook,” she said, “so there’s a lot of what I’d call different non-book drawings.”
When the new books are published, they will include an original sketch by Dr. Seuss and a note from the artists explaining how they were inspired by it.
Anjali Adukia, a professor at Harris School of Public Policy at the University of Chicago who studied racial differences in children’s books, said Wednesday that she was “excited to see the stories they create, bringing in their own experiences and reflecting them through their work.” “
Mallory Loer, executive vice president and publisher of Random House Books for Young Readers, will oversee the editorial guide for the new books. She said in a statement that the voices of the new authors and illustrators will “shine on every page, from cover to cover – with a glimpse of Dr. Seuss’s imagination, inserted in every book.”
Philip Nell, a scholar of children’s literature at Kansas State University and author of Dr. Seuss: American Icon, he said Wednesday that he was “pleased to see Dr. Seuss Enterprises take a step beyond last year’s product recall.”
“I hope this first step is the first of many,” he said.