Talk:Dr. Seuss

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[edit] Attitude Toward Japanese

I'm a little disappointed in what seems to come close to POV with respect to Geisel's views on Japanese people and the internment issue. There seems to be an assumption here that his cartoons take a positive view toward internment but an acknowledgement that he was much more progressive on racial issues in general. Isn't this reason enough to look for an alternative explanation of his cartoons on Japanese people around the time of intermnment? I think he ought to be given the benefit of the doubt that he's being consistent. Since I can think of a fairly obvious explanation for this consistency, it seems POV to assume he's taking one stance that his cartoons don't demonstrate. The explanation that occurs to me is that he's not portraying Japanese people as he thought they really were but was parodying the popular mindset. Someone we would now consider to be progressive would look at these cartoons and think they portray something ridiculous. Couldn't it be that that's the reaction he was hoping to elicit? --Parableman 20:58, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

The cartoons are very clearly racist, and are definetly not parodies. The are three years worth of cartoons here, and there is a consistent steryotyping of japanese in a non sarcastic manner. For example, if you look at the cartoons for February 13, 1942, or October 13, 1942, they are definetly not parodies. If you look through his other cartoons, the parodies are obvious with critical commentary of the lampooned speaker. If you read his cartoons it is very obvious what his meanings are, and it is irresonsible to try and rationalize his racisism towards the Japanese. September 9, 2006 —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 68.85.177.86 (talk • contribs) .

I've seen both of those cartoons before. The Feb 13, 1942 one was exactly one of the ones I was specifically talking about. an I stand by what I said. The cartoon with all the Japanese people is exactly the sort of thing I'd expect someone parodying the popular attitude to draw. It reduces it to absurdity. The Oct 13, 1942 cartoon isn't about this issue at all. It's depicting a particular Japanese person and not a nationality, and it uses the same sort of caricaturing features of most political cartoons. Compare the political cartoons of the president with what he actually looks like. Some of this just goes with the territory. But that's sort of irrelevant to the internment issue, which is all the article says anything about at this point. Since it's possible to think internment was wrong while drawing stereotypical features in political cartoons, we need to focus on the issue itself, which is whether cartoons like the other one you mentioned require seeing him as supporting internment. My immediate thought on seeing that cartoon in particular is that he was making fun of those who supported internment by reducing their view to silliness. Unless there are written statements otherwise, I consider it POV to read at best ambiguous cartoons as clear enough evidence to say in the article that he was portraying Japanese Americans as traitors. I don't see any strong evidence that he was doing that at all. Parableman 21:15, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Scholars widely regard Geisl's Japanese cartoons as racist. For example [1]. NoahB (talk) 12:09, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] politics section gutted

I see that "Richard M. Nixon, Will You Please Go Now!" has been removed from the article and it looks like the politics section was gutted completely. I haven't time to look through it all right now. I noticed this looking back at the version of the article at Wikipedia:WikiProject Illustrated Wikipedia (from 13 December 2006) and comparing it with today's version. Here's a link to the Nixon piece.[2] If this isn't fixed by someone else I'll try to remember to come back and fix things up later. — coelacan talk — 22:30, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

After some searching, I've found it: [3]. It seems to have been removed by an IP user, who then blanked the page; the blanking was reverted, but not the previous edit. I'll add it back in. Mr. Absurd (talk) 20:47, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
I've re-added it, but it still definitely needs a lot of work, as it's undercited and needs to be heavily copy-edited. Mr. Absurd (talk) 05:58, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Suggestions on Format

I suggest that the best-selling books section should be merged with the list of works. The long table is very tedious to go through, especially if the reader hasn't even seen his complete list of works yet. Having both a list of books section and a beginning books is very confusing too. Does anyone have any organizational suggestions? --Mistsrider (talk) 05:54, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Religion?

This article makes no mention of his religious background, or what he was raised as, and what he was when he died. 02:52, 24 March 2008 (UTC)02:52, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Name

This article used a mix of the names Dr. Seuss, Seuss, and Geisel. I've changed most of them to match as Geisel. I couldn't find a Wikipedia standard for this, but I'm fairly sure that a pen name shouldn't be used in this way. If you disagree, please comment here instead of reverting or undoing my changes. Mr. Absurd (talk) 00:55, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Redirection

I've redirected about 30+ Dr. Seuss books. They consisted almost entirely of plot information, and failed WP:Notability, WP:Fiction, and WP:Plot. I'm certainly not opposed to having articles on Dr. Seuss books, but these articles should not exist if they don't have any relevant content. I'd rather that the list of publications list only decent articles that actually have information other than plot.

The books I redirected:

Mr. Absurd (talk) 03:02, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

I think that all of these redirects should be reverted, and the previous content restored. Note I am not saying each book necessarily should stay a separate page, but the content that was there should at least be merged into a List of Dr. Seuss books wherein each book has its own section, with longer sections staying as separate pages with links (and brief summaries).
I also noticed that some cover images have been deleted while these pages were not using them (because they were redirects) and this should also be undone. Even as sections in a list the entries should include the covers of the respective books. —MJBurrage(T•C) 14:23, 4 May 2008 (UTC)
You're certainly entitled to your opinion, but I don't see the point of having a section for each book if the only information included is a plot summary. Summaries are meant to provide context for the encyclopedic content of the article; WP:PLOT says that “[a] concise plot summary is appropriate as part of the larger coverage of a fictional work.” You argued at AfD that these books qualify under WP:BK #5—however, I believe that the lack of any encyclopedic content trumps that argument.
I don't want to just rehash the AfD debate though, so I'm not going to spend a lot of time trying to convince you. If you feel very strongly about this, it doesn't seem I'll be able to do anything about it. However, if you think there is encyclopedic content that could be added, why don't you do so instead of discussing this? Mr. Absurd (talk) 23:42, 4 May 2008 (UTC)
I brought it up here first for a couple reasons. 1) I was under the impression that widespread changes such as the redirection of a large number of articles (or its reversal) was usually discussed first. 2) I do agree that many of the articles were on the short side for stand alone articles.
The solution is not deletion or simple redirection but merger. The information on the articles I looked at was not bad, just short, and should be retained with the potential for future expansion. Eventually I would expect an article/section like The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin for each book. (Overall a good encyclopedic article despite not having critical commentary.) —MJBurrage(T•C) 04:54, 5 May 2008 (UTC)
Alright, as much as I disagree, that seems reasonable. However, as there are also books by Geisel published under Theo. LeSieg (and one as Rosetta Stone) a page like List of books by Dr. Seuss would potentially be confusing. Should we maybe go with List of books by Theodor Geisel?
Also, you mentioned that you wanted to keep the book covers. While this might be a good idea, it would be problematic, as the infoboxes would be longer (taller) than the text. I would suggest that the only parameters we use be Author, Publication date, and OCLC/ISBN, as Country and Language would be the same for all of the books (the United States and English) and all but a few of Geisel's books were published by Random House (this could be indicated in the list's lead, perhaps?). Mr. Absurd (talk) 19:53, 5 May 2008 (UTC)
Just a thought: You might want to keep the covers in a gallery, as we do in other articles for images which are too good to toss out, and which might be needed in the future, but which don't have any obvious place in the article as it stands. Or the gallery could be kept on the Talk page, or in a subdocument. kwami (talk) 23:55, 5 May 2008 (UTC)
Unfortunately, since book covers are used under fair use, we can't do that. Since most of the book covers are available on Amazon or other sites, though, it wouldn't be a big deal to re-upload later. T he original source links could also be kept on a talk page too. Mr. Absurd (talk) 01:09, 6 May 2008 (UTC)
Then I'd suggest making room for any which aren't readily available (if there are any), and not worrying about the rest.
We already have a bibliography by pseudonym. What other info is relevant? kwami (talk) 01:49, 6 May 2008 (UTC)
Look at the pages for any of the books in the Peter Rabbit series for an example (The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin is good). Each page has all known publication details, a cover image, and a brief summary. That is what I am suggesting for Geisel, albeit with the change that each book be a section in a dedicated list rather than a separate page. If and when the section on any one book gets detailed enough, it would be split off onto it own page with a short summary and a "main article" link on the list page. Obviously some books (like The Cat in the Hat) would already be just a short summary and a "main article" link.
As for the size of each books "infobox". I would actually suggest that we use a captioned image of the cover as an abbreviated infobox. The caption would contain only key details (publication date, ID number, Illustrator if not Giesel). With each book having a brief background and a brief plot description, that should be enough to match the height of the cover. For really short entries, a wrap-clearing line break could be used. The first step would be to merge the pre-redirect contents and page histories of all the short articles together, and then clean them up to be more consistent. —MJBurrage(T•C) 16:07, 6 May 2008 (UTC)
I'm with Absurd. What's the point of a plot summary? That's available on Amazon, and in any case is one of the few things that consensus holds should not be on Wikipedia. "All publication details"--you mean, for each publication and printing? Again, what's the point? There are millions of books out there. Why should one be singled out for special treatment just because Geisel wrote it? It looks like we have all the notable info in this article already.
The only point I see to having an article on The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin is that it provides a place for links to online editions, which the Seuss books do not have since they're not public domain, though I suppose even they could be linked from the bibliography, as we do with references. kwami (talk) 17:32, 6 May 2008 (UTC)
By our own rules, everything on Wikipedia is available else ware, the point is to gather, and organize information. Plot summaries are not forbidden from articles or sections on books, in fact they should be present, they should also be written from the real world perspective by referring to specific works or parts of works ("In the first book", "In Act II") or describing things from the author or creator's perspective ("The author introduces", "The story describes").
It would be nice if each of these books had more content in the articles—some will quickly, and some wont, at least not for a while—but that does not mean we should not start with what we have already, it just means we should not stop there. Articles/sections should not be deleted, or effectively deleted via redirection, just because they are short, they should be tagged for expansion, or combined into comprehensive articles like we are discussing. Most of the articles redirected were starts of varying quality. By redirecting them to a simple list of titles material is lost (or at least hidden from the average user). That information was not unencyclopedic and so it should stay. Putting all of it in the Seuss article would make that article too long, hence a list of books where each book is a section until it is detailed enough to become a separate article.
If we keep deleting articles/sections that are in the stub stage, than no one will be able to come along later and improve them. The point of a collaborative encyclopedia is that I might only know that a book existed, and what it was about. Someone else may know more, have access to off-line sources, etc. but if my beginning get wiped out it is much less likely the the next person will restart it let alone expand it. Take any gret article on Wikipedia and go back to when it first started nd you are lily to find a version that "was not good enough" but instead of deletion it got expansion. We are not restricted on space, so as long as the information is encyclopedic it should stay. If the tone is wrong that rewrite rather than remove, —MJBurrage(T•C) 10:24, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
You make good points, but they don't really apply here. These articles aren't the beginnings of "great articles", and for the most part they're not stubs that will later be expanded. These books simply don't have any encyclopedic content written about them (in newspapers, books, magazines, etc.) for us to be able to expand them, and Wikipedia guidelines state that plot summaries should not be the only content in an article. I would love for these articles to be expanded, and I certainly would myself if I could, but I think it's simply not possible. Mr. Absurd (talk) 20:50, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
I think You're Only Old Once! might be notable. It was his last, wasn't it? and for a different audience. I think it has a fair amount written about it. kwami (talk) 21:37, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
Yeah, it would be notable enough, I must have missed that. There might be a few others, too, we should go through the list. Mr. Absurd (talk) 23:45, 7 May 2008 (UTC)