Nadine of Kiddos and Books sent me a link to Adam Gopnik's article on Babar in The New Yorker. The problem with Babar, as Gopnik explains, is the following: "Babar, such interpreters have insisted, is an allegory of French colonization, as seen by the complacent colonizers: the naked African natives, represented by the “good” elephants, are brought to the imperial capital, acculturated, and then sent back to their homeland on a civilizing mission." Gopnik disagrees with this interpretation, finding instead that the Babar books are "are a fable of the difficulties of a bourgeois life."
Check out these five facts about Dr. Seuss at the Mental Floss blog. Did you know he worked for Big Oil? Me neither. But...I did score 100% on the Dr. Seuss quiz available at the end of the page. Why? Most of the characters come from Dr. Seuss's ABC: An Amazing Alphabet Book--"Big A little a, what begins with a?"
