Rudeness — a national blight
Little is as uncontroversial as the first lady of the United States supporting literacy. So how could first lady Melania Trump’s gift of Dr. Seuss books to school libraries in 50 states become another furor in our all-outrage, all-thetime world? One word answers that question: rudeness. A Massachusetts elementary school librarian rejected Mrs. Trump’s donation of books, sent out to high-achieving schools to celebrate National Read a Book Day. Titles included classics — The Cat in the Hat; One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish; and Green Eggs and Ham. Hard to see a controversy in such choices.
Not to Liz Phipps Soeiro, a library media specialist at the Cambridgeport School in Cambridge, Mass., who wrote on The Horn Book Family Reading Blog that she would not be accepting the books. According to Phipps Soeiro, some of the books have racist imagery. Her condescension is exactly the liberal elite snootiness so disliked by Trump voters: “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,” she writes. Tell that to all the children who still giggle when the Cat in the Hat comes to wreak havoc on a rainy afternoon.
Some of what she said is worth noting. Cambridge, she said, spends more than $20,000 a year per pupil, yet that is not the case elsewhere: “Meanwhile, school libraries around the country are being shuttered. Cities like Philadelphia, Chicago, and Detroit are suffering through expansion, privatization, and school ‘choice’ with no interest in outcomes of children, their families, their teachers, and their schools,” Phipps Soeiro writes. “Are those kids any less deserving of books simply because of circumstances beyond their control?”
Yet with one blog post, a gracious gesture from the first lady — similar to what previous presidential spouses have done — became another chapter in our national culture war. While we might agree that Trump policies on education are sorely lacking, the place to protest those initiatives is not in rejecting a gift.
Even if the Cambridgeport School doesn’t need the books, a more gracious response would have been to say thank you. If the librarian wanted to regift the books to a school or children who needed them more, that could have been a separate decision (and she might have wanted to consult her bosses, who were caught unawares by her rudeness.)
This nonstop sniping back and forth — whether conservatives pretending outrage because Michelle Obama wore a sleeveless sheath dress to the State of the Union or a librarian becoming upset by Dr. Seuss — is exhausting. Everyone needs books, children most of all. As Dr. Seuss would say, “Think and wonder, wonder and think.”