I liked Dr Seuss too

I liked Dr Seuss too.

The first of his stories I remember was kind of obscure, The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins.

With hindsight, that book was weird as hell, but mesmerising. You peered through the pages and into the author's imagination - like a world painted in exuberant colours that haven't been invented yet.

I loved other stories too, even more as I got older and understood their forward thinking: Yertle the Turtle, the Sneetches and the Lorax. But that growing understanding, it was a double-edged sword. I could now see the caricatures too, the undertone of mockery, and maybe a little callousness.

Those books helped tiny me, nearly four decades ago, take my first steps into critical thinking. That's the thing I treasure most, the thing I'm nostalgic for: the pleasure of being introduced to my own mind.

I learned, people can be dicks: Yertle showed me that. Sometimes they pile on each other, because everyone else is, without even questioning. Or they act like Sneetches, finding reasons to hate one another. People can be awesome too. Every now and then you get a Lorax, speaking for trees that the rest would chop down.

The majority of us sit somewhere between these poles, like Dr Seuss himself. Legacy is complex. At the end of the day, we're mostly just obscure weirdos with hats.

The thing is, it's still racism. Black people drawn as monkeys, the silly lampoon of the Chinese. It doesn't matter what feelings we attached to it all those years ago: we have no business handing it uncritically to our kids.

Maybe, instead, we can talk to our kids about the way ideas change - and when they do, how we need to be brave and change with them. We can explain that it's OK to set aside a handful of books that have done their time; cherish instead the dozens that are timeless.

It's critical thinking, I guess - and on a good day, Dr Seuss was pretty damn fine at it.

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PS. For the ones crying 'cancel culture', I have a few words.

I do not like those grumpy folk.

I do not like them yelling WOKE.

I do not like when they complain

Kids don't know if they're John or Jane.

I do not like them telling me

They love Sean Plunket and ZB.

But most of all, I will not stand

Their racist claptrap in this land.