If I Ran the Zoo (1950)

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If I Ran the Zoo is a children book written by Dr. Seuss in 1950. This book is written in anapestic tetrameter, which is Dr. Seuss usual verse type and illustrated in his trademark pen and ink style.

Plot

Book Cover of 'If I Ran the Zoo' By Dr.Seuss

The story is about a boy named Gerald McGrew, who imagines his dream zoo while listing all exiting and wondrous creature he would include in his zoo. The story starts when McGrew meets the owner of the zoo and discloses to him how he thought regular zoo creatures are not sufficient and reveals to him how he will allow  every animals to ne free and discover new and weird ones.

“But if I ran a zoo,’ said young Gerald McGrew”…and he starts lists all of the creatures, travels to odd places and trying to capture them into nets and boxes.

He imagines that his dream zoo would be celebrated and applause by visitors before he is brought back to reality and the story ends.[1]

Controversy

Because of its use of racial stereotypes and caricatures, If I Ran the Zoo story book has been criticized of racism, even though the racism is hidden beneath the grand idea of travelling around the world to bring a different and rare animal. This of concept of gathering all animal from around the world would make an ideal zoo a kid could dream of. However, in each of the adventure to those countries, Dr. Seuss includes racist and stereotypical remarks about people living in these countries. There are a story that use stereotypes of Asian who has slanted eyes, jokes about Russian typical names that ending in ‘sky’ or ‘ski’, and also there is a depiction of Africans describes as funny looking black monkeys in tutus.[2] In a 1988 biography of Dr. Seuss also mentionedthe presence of incidental generalizations of natives, thick-lipped blacks from Africa, small crinkled eyed Orientals.

References

  1. If I Ran the Zoo. Wikipedia. Retrieved December 18, 2020.
  2. Racial Innocence – “If I Ran The Zoo” By Dr.Seuss Retrieved on December 15, 2020.