Liberal School Librarian Rejects “Racist” Dr. Seuss Books Donated by Melania Trump
“my school doesn’t have a NEED for these books”
A school librarian in Cambridge, Massachusetts has rejected a book donation from First Lady Melania Trump.
Liz Phipps Soeiro claims that her school doesn’t need the books and also scoffed at Ms. Trump’s choice of titles.
CBS News reported:
Librarian explains why she rejected books donated by Melania Trump
A librarian at the Cambridgeport Elementary School in Massachusetts is declining a shipment of books from first lady Melania Trump.
One school from each state was chosen by the White House to receive 10 Dr. Seuss books as part of National Read a Book Day, CBS Boston reports.
“Getting an education is perhaps the most important and wondrous opportunity of your young lives,” Trump said in a letter to the children who will be receiving books.
The school’s librarian, Liz Phipps Soeiro, wrote a lengthy editorial for the Horn Book’s Family Reading blog explaining why her school does not need the books.
Here are some excerpts from the post Ms. Soeiro wrote at the Horn Book blog:
Dear Mrs. Trump
Thank you for the ten Dr. Seuss titles that you sent my school library in recognition of this year’s National Read a Book Day. (Sent second-day air, no less! That must have been expensive.) I’m proud that you recognized my school as something special. It truly is…
My students were interested in reading your enclosed letter and impressed with the beautiful bookplates with your name and the indelible White House stamp, however, we will not be keeping the titles for our collection. I’d like to respectfully offer my explanation.
My school and my library are indeed award-winning. I work in a district that has plenty of resources, which contributes directly to “excellence.” Cambridge, Massachusetts, is an amazing city with robust social programming, a responsive city government, free all-day kindergarten, and well-paid teachers (relatively speaking — many of us can’t afford to live in the city in which we teach). My students have access to a school library with over nine thousand volumes and a librarian with a graduate degree in library science.
From there, she goes after the choice of titles. Dr. Seuss is problematic, you see:
So, my school doesn’t have a NEED for these books. And then there’s the matter of the books themselves. You may not be aware of this, but Dr. Seuss is a bit of a cliché, a tired and worn ambassador for children’s literature.
Another fact that many people are unaware of is that Dr. Seuss’s illustrations are steeped in racist propaganda, caricatures, and harmful stereotypes. Open one of his books (If I Ran a Zoo or And to Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street, for example), and you’ll see the racist mockery in his art. Grace Hwang Lynch’s School Library Journal article, “Is the Cat in the Hat Racist? Read Across America Shifts Away from Dr. Seuss and Toward Diverse Books,” reports on Katie Ishizuka’s work analyzing the minstrel characteristics and trope nature of Seuss’s characters.
Here’s a video report from CBS News:
Soeiro and her defenders are claiming this isn’t political. I don’t believe them. Do you honestly believe a book donation from Michelle Obama would be rejected on any grounds? The former First Lady could send any books and the gift would have been praised.
Twitchy has compiled some responses to The Hill’s report on this:
Elementary school librarian rejects books donated by Melania Trump https://t.co/RdDtxEj5vO pic.twitter.com/aVcB11w7Ks
— The Hill (@thehill) September 28, 2017
The books were Dr. Seuss books.
The librarian is a petty bitch. https://t.co/xs35YsvNQ0
— RBe (@RBPundit) September 28, 2017
How many of you loved Dr. Seuss books as a kid and your kids love them too? ????♀ pic.twitter.com/LHpHshBBgZ
— Mostradamus (@molratty) September 28, 2017
Politics before kids education. Great job.
— Captain America (@280Zdriver) September 28, 2017
This teacher needs a reality check. Playing politics over children’s books is ridiculous.
— Wayne Trendy (@TrendyNewsBits) September 28, 2017
Noooo. This isn’t an issue of politics… Sad… You take the books like you’d take any gift. Graciously. Find an appropriate home.
— Maureen Kelly (@MaureennKelly) September 28, 2017
How rude of this librarian. Her priorities seem way off, esp. for a *librarian.*
Just say “Thank you” – and let the kids read.
Manners 101— Anna Herrington (@JustThinkingNow) September 28, 2017
This is truly the dumbest time to be alive. pic.twitter.com/So10YcLTUR
— T. Becket Adams (@BecketAdams) September 28, 2017
Featured image via YouTube.
DONATE
Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.
Comments
You covered the stupid but not the hypocritical part of this whole topic.
How many times did the Obamas read from Dr. Seuss?
Where were all the protests of all the times the Obamas cited Dr. Seuss read Dr. Seuss talked about Dr. Seuss?
It’s such a stupid comment by the teacher that it doesn’t need piling on but it is helpful every time someone on the left makes stupid actions like this to point out that they were fine with the same things yesterday when Obama was president.
IowaHawk is all over it.
https://twitter.com/iowahawkblog/status/913763599570624515
https://twitter.com/iowahawkblog/status/913748090741575681
That “LIE-Bear-re-an” is a Democrat Nazi and a bigot racist!
Snark.
Bet that LIE-Bear-re-an looks just like the
Democrat-Fascist-Progressive-Leftists’ top fashion advisor…….
Here’s the Fashion Editor ( Lynn Yaeger) Who Trashed First Lady Melania Trump…
http://cdn.thegatewaypundit.com/wp-content/uploads/Lynn-Yaeger.jpg
When I was a kindergarten teacher, I personally bought the Dr. Seuss book, “Horton Hatches the Egg” and read it to my class at least one time a week. The line in the book, “I meant what I said and I said what I meant, I’m an elephant faithful, 100%” was an important lesson I was trying to impress on the children that our word should be our bond. Nowadays, integrity is no longer a common virtue and it is a lesson we need to reintroduce to our lives and our children’s lives.
This librarian is what it sounds like when the ‘liberal’ has been bred out of Liberalism. You end up with Orwellian nonsense think.
more like — nonsense St-ink.
I have a big family. I read most of these books to my kids so many times that I literally had them memorized to the point that each of the characters had their own voice and the kids knew if I used the wrong voice. They wouldn’t allow my wife to read them because she didn’t use the same voices.
My family is all grown up and gone now but to a child, they all report how many fond memories they have of us sitting on the couch bundled together with me reading Horton Hatches the Egg or something like that.
This librarian even criticized the method of shipment as if because it is the government, they should have had them delivered via Marine One or something.
This librarian’s letter is obnoxious and drips with sarcasm from first word to last (“Sent second-day air, no less! That must have been expensive.” Twit.). Since she won’t be fired, she needs to be ruthlessly mocked the rest of her days.
Oh, and Liz Phipps Soeiro looks *exactly* as you picture her:
https://turtleboysports.com/sjw-cambridge-elementary-school-librarian-sends-back-free-books-to-melania-trump-because-dr-seuss-is-racist-wants-books-about-gender-expression-instead/
Poor thing……
Mocked?
She’s a public employee in Massachusetts (Cambridge no less).
This’ll be a line item on her resume.
Yes, mockery. It’s the only thing that works to neutralize these Leftist brats.
And I don’t give 2 figs that her obnoxious letter enhances her resume in the People’s Republic of Cambridge. Recall that Pajama Boy and Sandra Fluke still have their local supporters, too, but have been made national symbols of buffoonery by the constant mockery they’ve gotten from conservatives. So it can work.
Forget the picture (I wish I could)–reading the rest of her screed makes me want to vomit.
I wonder if this Librarian can read, speak, and write in five languages like Melania can?
No, but zhe can recite from memory all 437 gender-fluid pronouns.
perfect!
What an arrogant and ugly women. No, I didn’t look at her image, it’s her mind I find ugly.
She is in Massachusetts so she won’t be fired, as she should be, for being a total nitwit. However there are many, many nitwits teaching our children these days.
I think she should be fired because she exhibits so much hate. I wouldn’t want my grandchildren, or any children around so much hate. It isn’t good for developing minds.
While I am appalled at the words, actions and tone of this “librarian” and exceedingly grateful that my children or grandchildren are not subjected to her choices in appropriate reading material I must make the observation that the Cambridge School District is one of the (if not THE) very wealthiest school districts in Massachusetts.
I can think of dozens of school districts in Massachusetts that would have been more than grateful for First Lady Melania Trump’s wonderful and appropriate donation. Sadly, this librarian’s actions and the publicity of them mean that those districts will never have the chance.
/I wonder if she’ll be auctioning off the books or selling them on eBay.
your observation is cogent.
the reality is the WH crew who chose the recipients of these gifts, were at fault, without first checking out the schools and getting an appreciation note for these gifts.
if the recipients were not interested, find another school.
it would have made much more sense for these books be given to poor schools which will appreciate the gifts and get pub licity for addition outside donations.
Then why didn’t the Librarian simply donate the books to a school that doesn’t have the wonderful library that her school has? Why turn a “gift” into a political statement? And then why make sure that the media is alerted to her ugly and divisive statement?
She wanted her 15 minutes and she got it.
Is it any wonder that the country is in the condition that it is?
This person plays the role of a librarian a position of trust and impartiality. What happen…… ?
A woman so infected with the progressive pox……..
As a nation I think we are doomed! How do you recover from crap like this?
She should be removed from her position but my guess is she will get an award instead. She felt safe enough to write and post on a blog why she did not want the books. God help us!
Her mind and soul are ill and I sincerely hope she seeks help from Jesus to heal her soul. (I don’t think a psychiatrist or psychologist can help until she tamps down the hate to the point where she stops hurting herself and people in her care, and once she has she may or may not need help for the mind as well.)
I do not like self-righteous twits
I do not like them, not a bit
They scream and holler on such things
as when to kneel and proper bling
and on and on they fluff and blather
until I think that I would rather
spend the day cooped up inside
reading Doctor Seuss with pride.
Really, it’s not about Dr. Seuss, it’s about power.
Public libraries seldom welcome book donations; when they get them, often they’ll just sell all of it as used books and use the money to buy what they want to buy.
Librarians (and the American Library Association) are convinced they know better than you (and certainly better than any donor) what’s good and what’s not. And therefore they jealously guard the authority to select what goes in the stacks, and what doesn’t.
(Of course, librarians are also up against the problem that few adults read books anymore, and even stocking DVDs and other media doesn’t work so well when many have moved on to streaming and downloads. The solution seems to be to turn increasingly irrelevant public libraries into “community centers,” but that’s another story.)
That’s right, libraries – as well as all arts and entertainment – do not need any government funding or tax breaks of any sort.
Not only are they community centers: here by us, the local library doubles as a warming shelter in the winter and a cooling shelter in the summer for all the
drunk and drug-addled vagrantshomeless. Silly me – I didn’t realize that was now the mission of the local library.Why are liberals so ugly (both inside and out)???
She let her petty politics get in the way of common decency AND common sense. And why? Because she truly HATES FLOTUS and as we know, when liberals hate enough then can and, and will, do anything without giving it a second thought.
Clearly, we have now found the ‘root cause’ of all racism in America … Dr Suess.
Generations of small children have been indoctrinated.
It’s not the first time a library contained books whose content was beyond the intellectual comprehension of the librarian.
I was an early self taught reader and I credit Dr Seuss.
Oh boy—the books have “The Indelible White House Stamp”. Cool.
When the lefties get around to attacking Pooh and Eeyore it’ll be time to select safety off.
Progressive liberals judge people by the “color of their skin”. They deny individual dignity (i.e. character) and advocate for color diversity (i.e. racism).
Baby Lives Matter.
My goodness, I can see how hard she tried to be diplomatic, but every word, every sentence is so condescending and dripping with leftist virtue signalling. Like how she points out the books were sent via second day air and must have been expensive. Lol.
My wife volunteered for years to help reading challenged children, usually inner city black children, learn to read at a more proficient level. Often, they could not read at all. She would usually use the Seuss books as they were fun and were written precisely for helping children develop a love of reading.
My wife was very successful.
The witch in the article needs to be burned at the stake. She is nothing more than the typical communist dedicated to making life miserable.
She does not like Green Eggs and Ham. She does not like them, Sam I Am.
Welp, there’s more to this story:
Michelle Obama must be racist.
https://i.imgur.com/vIwQQF7.png
https://www.reddit.com/r/The_Donald/comments/738lcd/horton_hears_a_hypocrite_librarian_dressed_as_cat/
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2017/09/29/librarian-who-rejected-melania-trumps-dr-seuss-books-dressed-as-cat-in-hat.html
The Massachusetts elementary school librarian who rejected Dr. Seuss books donated by First Lady Melania Trump because the publication’s artwork contained “racist mockery,” was previously photographed dressed as the Cat in the Hat and holding a “Green Eggs and Ham” themed breakfast
Look at what this school was teaching 2nd graders just three days before the inauguration:
https://twitter.com/Cport_Special/status/821786792957509641
So…. apparently it’s ok for Michelle Obama and Liz Phipps Soeiro to throw Dr. Seuss parties, but Soeiro objects to Melania Trump’s donation of Dr. Seuss books. Also, Soeiro’s idea of the right topic for 2nd graders at inauguration of a US President is indoctrination in protesting.
This woman is too indiscreet about her political leanings to be allowed around small children.
One of my links has a problem, so here is Soeiro, at her Dr. Seuss party, in costume.
https://www.reddit.com/r/The_Donald/comments/738dh8/heres_dc_librarian_liz_phipps_soeiro_who_rejected/
She is probably very disappointed that both the Red Bookstore and the Revolution Bookstore in Cambridge have closed their doors.
https://www.yelp.com/biz/red-book-store-cambridge
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucy_Parsons_Center
http://revolutionbookscamb.org/
http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2004/12/9/seeing-red-in-a-city-like/