Agreed. I rather liked “And to think that I saw it on Mulberry Street”, and my understanding is that you wouldn’t need to remove very much of it.
Oh, and “On Beyond Zebra”! That wasn’t one I read as a kid, but a lot of people I know found it inspirational, in a “you can think outside the box” way.
Hugh Lofting’s original Dr. Dolittle had some problematic sections. Set partly in Africa, the n-word appears at least twice, one of them used by Prince Bumpo to describe himself. The scenario also includes “cultural contamination”: Bumpo has been reading White Man’s children’s fairy tales like Snow White and Sleeping Beauty, and his notion of feminine beauty is a White woman.
I assume that subsequent editions of the story have been somewhat sanitized.
Walt Kelly, in mid-1960’s or so, had a story arc in which one of the characters re-tells a Kelleyesque version of Little Black Sambo. But first, the characters argue over what could be a non-controversial color to make him instead of Black. They finally settle on Little Plaid Sambo. In the ensuing telling of the story, he is drawn that way too.
Just wait until they dig up his littlest-known work: One Wife, Two Wife, Dead Wife, New Wife.
True. I wouldn’t give them to a pre-schooler, though.
They might be really useful in a high school class, as an example of how even people who are trying not to be racist can do racist things.
Which doesn’t fix the problem; which is that the mere existence of a person from China on the street is shown as an oddity, somebody that shouldn’t really be there.
Oh, for sure. Just pointing out that there’s already a precedent for changing the material as our standards and sensibilities evolve.