‘You’re off to Great Places!’
DR. SUESS: Museum opens its doors
SPRINGFIELD, Mass. — From the squiggly, pink handrails outside the entrance to the front hall decorated with scenes from And to Think That I Saw it on Mulberry Street — a real street just blocks away — the new Amazing World of Dr. Seuss museum says: “You’re off to Great Places!”
Walking into to the museum in the author and illustrator’s hometown of Springfield, Mass., is like walking into one of his beloved children’s books.
The museum dedicated to Theodor Geisel — who under the pen name Dr. Seuss wrote and illustrated dozens of rhyming children’s books including The Cat in the Hat and Green Eggs and Ham — features interactive exhibits, artwork never before displayed publicly and explains how his childhood experiences in the city about 145 kilometres west of Boston shaped his work.
“He would absolutely be at ease here,” said Leagrey Dimond, one of Geisel’s stepdaughters.
Examples of Geisel’s early advertising work and Second World Warera propaganda and political illustrations that critics consider racist are conspicuously absent, but that’s because the museum is aimed primarily at children, said Kay Simpson, president of the Springfield Museums complex.
The organization has in the past hosted exhibits of Geisel’s wartime work, she said.
Kids are definitely the focus of the first floor of the museum, created in conjunction with Dr. Seuss Enterprises, the family company that protects Geisel’s legacy. It features games and climbable statues of Horton, the stack of turtles from Yertle the Turtle and Other Stories and Thing 1 and Thing 2 from The Cat in the Hat.
“This museum is about visitors encountering the creatures that sprang out from Ted Geisel’s imagination — Horton, the Cat in the Hat, the Lorax, Sam I Am — that got kids excited about reading,” Simpson said.
The museum’s second floor has a more intimate feeling with the actual furnishings and assorted knickknacks from Geisel’s studio from the La Jolla, Calif., home where he lived until his death in 1991 at age 87. Even his collection of 117 bow ties is on display.
But by not referencing Geisel’s wartime work, which often stereotyped the Japanese, the museum is telling only half the story, said Katie Ishizuka, who has written on Geisel’s work.
Dimond said Geisel had some regrets about the wartime work.
“If there is criticism of Ted, it has its place,” she said. “I would never try to, and he would not want any of us to try to hide away anything he did. I know that he changed with the times.”
Richard Minear, a professor emeritus of Japanese history at the University of Massachusetts who wrote Dr. Seuss Goes to War, says Geisel had a blind spot on race, but it’s not fair to judge his entire career on that work.