Great imaginative book.

This is the first of the Dr. Seuss’ books that I plan to read. They have been labeled as “racist.” I won’t count all of them as books read unless I see the need to comment on it. So I won’t pad my numbers—LOL. This book was written in 1947. I was ten years old, an avid reader, but don’t recall this book. My point is that for a book to be published for 73 years proves, to me, that it has been of value to millions of children. It is a great book to spur the imagination—something that I think many of today’s children don’t develop. The word “Eskimo” is used on one page. That seems to be the only thing that earns this book the racist charge. My keyword search for Eskimo on my library’s catalog, and it yielded 137 items. If the criteria is used for removing books, there will need to be a good many more lost. The Cancel Culture has become ridiculous. One day I hope we will look back on these days and shake our heads at how stupid it was.

Recently, the decision was made to stop publishing six Dr. Seuss books due to racist imagery. The six books are: And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street, If I Ran the Zoo, McElligot's Pool, On Beyond Zebra!, Scrambled Eggs Super!, and The Cat's Quizzer. I’ve read several Dr. Seuss books over the years but I wasn’t familiar with the six books in question, so I decided to read them, while I still had a chance, and to see what all the fuss was about.

The fourth book I read was McElligot’s Pool, about a young boy fishing at a small fishing hole known as McElligot’s Pool. A farmer walks by and calls him a fool, saying he will never catch any fish in such a small pool. The boy replies that one never knows, and in typical Dr. Seuss rhythm and meter, goes on to describe all the fantastical fish that could be in McElligot’s Pool. The problem is with the following passage:

Some Eskimo Fish
From beyond Hudson Bay
Might decide to swim down;
Might be headed this way

The fish are depicted as wearing a fur-lined hood and there is an “Eskimo” standing in front of an igloo.

I agree that the image and the use of the word “Eskimo” is outdated and racist. However, it is a shame to stop publishing such a fun and innocent book over it. Perhaps a better option would be to either completely cut out this passage, or change the wording to something along the lines of Some Arctic Fish and change the image — redraw the fish wearing earmuffs and scarves, for example, and replace the “Eskimo” and igloo with various arctic animals, such as a polar bear and narwhal.

I'm reading through all of Dr. Seuss's books chronologically, and this is his sixth one. It's also his first sequel, as the main character Marco was also the narrator of his very first book And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street a decade earlier, and it's also his first children's book after a seven-year hiatus during World War II and its aftermath, years in which Seuss kept busy with other commitments.

In my thoughts on his previous book Horton Hatches the Egg (1940) I speculated on how it could have reflected Seuss's political opinions about the United States' unreliability in keeping its commitments while Hitler ran rampant through Europe. That books seems to be saying that the US, like Horton, should do what it said it would and defend its allies against fascist aggression. And this seems consistent with his activities during the war. After Pearl Harbor Seuss worked as a political cartoonist for the New York paper PM, publishing a flurry of 400 cartoons in two years supporting the war effort and lambasting isolationists like Charles Lindbergh. He attacked antisemitism while simultaneously perpetuating anti-Japanese-American racism, and then he moved from the private press to the military war effort, working on films for the Air Force—this, of course, was his first involvement with animation, which would later form such a large part of his career. I remember watching one of his Private Snafu films in an undergraduate History of Animation class. It was about Axis espionage and the dangers of divulging secrets—poor Snafu is seduced by a beautiful woman who turns out to be a German spy.

Seuss continued working on propaganda films into the postwar period, and not just cartoons. Not only did he enlist as a captain and receive the Legion of Merit for his film work, but he worked on the documentary Design for Death, about Japanese culture, that won the Oscar for best documentary in 1947. And of course, turning away from the war effort, he wrote the unpublished story that was the basis of the animated short Gerald McBoing Boing, a story built around sound effects which won the 1950 Oscar for best animated short and served as the foundational film for the new studio United Productions of America.

So I don't know the chronology of when Seuss was writing each project, but all of this is to say he was busy when he finally returned to children's picture books around 1947. So it's not surprising he looked back to his first success and brought back Marco and his oversized imagination, as well as Mulberry Street's basic premise. Just as he had done on his walk home on Mulberry Street, now Marco, fishing in a tiny pool belonging to old man McElligot, imagines what incredible oceanic wildlife might be lurking beneath the depths. The inky black ocean always invites Freudian interpretations of the unconscious, and there are certainly some monsters from the id here, but, hey, it's for kids, so Seuss keeps it pretty light.

But there are all kinds of amazing sea creatures described here, painted in watercolor. I've seen some sources claim that this was the only time he ever published in watercolor, but I believe he'd already done it earlier in The Seven Lady Godivas and that he'd return to it at least once more in Happy Birthday to You!. The effect is fairly muted here, but it does reveal the subtlety of his artistic eye in a way that you don't get with his solid tones in acrylic or oil paint. It's a nice watery touch, appropriate for the subject matter, and I wish that publishing costs or other restrictions let him do it more often.

At any rate, the book essentially follows the exact same structure as Mulberry Street and many books afterward: the entire narrative is just a list of different kinds of fish from different parts of the world that Marcos's hook might find. In structuring his book this way, Seuss is harkening back over a decade of narrative storytelling in his books, cartoons, and films to access his original and most basic storyline, and it works brilliantly: here it's a list of increasingly weird creatures, and there's no actual narrative progression at all, just a bunch of crazy fish. I've seen these described as his "bestiary" books, but the fundamental structure goes broader than that, extending to other list books like Green Eggs and Ham. So, McElligot's Pool is not as good a book as the narrative story Horton Hatches the Egg, but it's really a return to form for him, a rediscovery of what made his first book so successful, enough so that he would return to the list format again and again in books like If I Ran the Circus / Zoo, Scrambled Eggs Super, On Beyond Zebra, and onwards.

I don't think McElligot's Pool was ever among Seuss's best-loved works, although it won the Caldecott Honor and some other awards, but it sure set him back on course for future success after the long interregnum of the war. It probably also serves as literature's greatest example of a fish story, exaggerating the one that got away, with all apologies to the late, great, and hilarious outdoor humorist Patrick McManus. I grew up reading stories by both men, and I'll raise a glass to both of you gentlemen up in heaven, where the lines need no bait and the fish are always biting.

My complete series of reviews of all sixty-three Dr. Seuss books in order—a list I believe only exists here—plus three of his many books published posthumously, is here. And here specifically are my reviews of his previous book, n  Horton Hatches the Eggn, and his next one, n  Thidwick the Big-Hearted Moosen.

This story comes after n  And to Think That I Saw it on Mulberry Streetn and revolves around the amazingly imaginative Marco.

In 1950, McElligot's Pool won the Pacific Northwest Library Association Young Reader's Choice Award, and in 1948, it won the Caldecott Honor.

My Take
I had barely started before I knew the graphics would be such a very Seuss-ian delight, *grin*

The odd thing, though, is that the color graphics alternate with the gray-and-white ones, and I don't understand why. I did love the one with the "flexible" strut holding up a whale of an outcropping of land on which sits the town, LOL.

It does make for an interesting contrast between the wise, all-knowing farmer who warns Marco he'll never catch a fish in this solitary pool, and the imaginative enthusiasm Marco shows. It also provides Seuss with the opportunity to provide a geological lesson as well as one on the denizens of the sea. And lots of opportunities for Mom and the kids to exercise their own imaginations. Lord knows, Seuss was amazingly creative with the kinds of fish Marco thinks might be catchable.

Brilliantly done with its own reality.

The Story
Young Marco may find a fish here in McElligot's Pool despite what any old farmer might say.

The Characters
Marco is a young boy with an imagination and a farmer.

Oh, yeah, and lots and lots and lots of fish.

The Cover and Title
The background for the cover is an elliptical swirl of blues and grays as an orange and green fish greedily eyes a worm on a hook that's attached to a bobber floating in the water. The title and author's name is in a soft fuchsia with the title outlined in black.

The title could possibly be a portal to the sea, oh, yes, who knows how far McElligot's Pool may flee.

I read this book out loud waiting for the big bomb to go off. Well, I waited and waited. Why on earth has this book been banned? Complete insanity.

For years this was favorite bedtime reading for my two daughters. It had a lilting rhyme and pictures to engage the toddler with fantasy, imagination, and vocabulary that appealed to the older child. I loved it because it linked the local countryside with the whole world, even "the world's highest mountains in far-off Tibet."
"This might be a pond like I've read of in books,
Connected to one of those underground brooks,
A brook that keeps flowing where no one can see
Right under State Highway 203...."
Until the brook becomes a river and connects to the sea, opening up to all the waterways of the world with all their strange and wonderful possibilities. It was about imagination and diversity but also about ecology - encouraging young minds to think about how the junk they might throw in a local pond or stream connected to everything else in the world. This little book deserves to be promoted, not banned. The archaic single use of the term "Eskimo" could easily be edited out.

It's Dr. Seuss Week. I am an Assistant in an Afterschool Program and every year we celebrate Dr Seuss' birthday, March 2nd, with Dr. Seuss Week. I decided I needed to go to the library and collect as many unknown/less popular Dr. Seuss books as I could and have the kids read them this week in the daily 20 minute reading time. I checked out 18!

This is a wonderful story of patience, not giving up, not necessarily listening to what someone tells you (listening to yourself), and using your imagination.

A boy has been fishing in Mr. McElligot's Pool for 2 hours. A farmer sees him and tells him,

"You're sort of a fool! You'll never catch fish in McElligot's Pool".

The young boy goes on to tell the farmer all the reasons why he's not a fool, why he's not going to give up, and he's going to keep trying because maybe just maybe, he'll end up catching a fish.

The message is brilliant all the while giving a funny story as Dr. Seuss is so well known for.

I love the farmer's face expression on the last page of like a (my interpretation), "Oh, why I never thought of it like that, when you put that way."

Rae said this is her favorite Dr. Seuss so far!

Another Dr. Seuss book in my mission to read them all.

My daughter read this one to me. I enjoyed it because of all the creative and wacky fish. Marco, the narrator, has a great imagination which he shares with his readers. More than ever, it's important for children to remember how fun it is to have an imagination!

I marked this one 4 stars because only some of the pictures were colored and I felt that took away a bit from this story. It wouldn't have bothered me if the black and white drawings were life and the color represented Marco's imagination but it seemed there was no rhyme or reason.

• 1948 Caldecott Honor Book •

Something about Dr. Seuss’ children’s books have never quite appealed to me. The pictures are just so out there. I love all his advertising work - maybe his children’s books are too overwhelming and his advertising work is easier to take in. But I recognize his talent and his importance in children’s literature, and after recently reading other Caldecott books from the ‘40s this was a relief.

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That imaginative young boy from Dr. Seuss' very first picture-book, n  And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Streetn, published in 1937, returns in this second adventure, full of all of the make-believe and whimsy that one would expect. Advised that he is unlikely to catch anything in the eponymous McElligot's Pool, which serves as a sort of trash dump for the farmers thereabouts, Marco demurs, certain that there is a possibility, at the very least, of catching some interesting fish. What follows is a wondrous catalogue of all of the unlikely fish that might be swimming up the theoretical underground spring connecting the pool to the sea. From dogfish with floppy ears (chasing catfish, of course), to fish with checkerboard bellies; from sunburnt tropical fish to anorak-wearing arctic fish (more on this anon); from two-headed eels to roughneck lobsters - the possibilities are as limitless as one's own imagination, leading Marco to conclude that he is no fool at all, for fishing in McElligot's Pool...

A delightful pean to the power of the imagination, McElligot's Pool was first published in 1947, ten years after Marco's previous adventure, and seven years after Seuss' (then) most recent picture-book, n  Horton Hatches the Eggn. Between 'McElligot' and 'Horton' lie seven years of war (World War II) and its immediate aftermath. Seuss, who was active as a cartoonist during this period - his adult war work has been criticized as racist propaganda, and was something that he himself apparently regretted, in later years - did not publish any children's books between 1940 and 1947. Although it was never a personal favorite in my childhood home, I do recall that we owned a copy of this book, when I was a girl, and that I read and enjoyed it many times. I picked it up for this reread as part of a recently undertaken Dr. Seuss retrospective, launched as an act of personal protest against the recent decision from Dr. Seuss Enterprises to suppress six of the author's titles, because they contain outdated and potentially offensive elements. Those titles include this one, McElligot's Pool, as well as n  And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Streetn, n  If I Ran the Zoon, n  Scrambled Eggs Super!n, n  On Beyond Zebra!n and n  The Cat's Quizzern.

McElligot's Pool was chosen as a Caldecott Honor Book in 1948, and it is not difficult to see why, given its entertaining text and magical artwork, which work so well together. Dr. Seuss continued to develop and improve his wordplay in the book, which, like its immediate predecessor (n  Horton Hatches the Eggn), displayed a rhythmically rhyming text not seen in his first three children's books. His artwork also continued to evolve here, utilizing far more color than in previous titles, where the black-and-white drawings were often relieved by a single color accent (n  The King's Stiltsn), or a limited range of color accents (n  And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Streetn). Here the illustrations alternate between black-and-white spreads, and full-color ones utilizing a wide variety of shades, to marvelous effect. The sheer inventiveness of Marco's catalogue of wondrous fish is delightful, and the accompanying artwork beautiful. In short: a wonderful picture-book! What then has caused Dr. Seuss Enterprises to stop publishing it, despite its undeniably good qualities, its status as a classic of American childhood, and the fact that it has been a perennial bestseller?

The trouble lies chiefly with the aforementioned "arctic fish," which are described in the text as "Eskimo Fish," and which are seen swimming past a stereotypical "Eskimo," complete with igloo and furry anorak. The fish too are depicted in this style, with a furry collar around their faces, suggesting anoraks of their own. The two-page spread depicting this scene directly follows another, depicting tropical fish swimming past a stereotypical tropical islander, shown taking a siesta underneath a palm tree. I haven't seen much commentary on the latter image, although it's entirely possible I've missed it. In any case, there is no doubt that the word "Eskimo" is now considered outdated, and even offensive to some, and that terms like Inuit and Yupik are preferred. At the time of original publication, obviously, this was not the case, and "Eskimo" was considered by most to be a neutral word, used to describe a human demographic group, in much the same way that "Negro" once was. We don't use the latter word today, save in a historical sense - referring to the Negro League, for instance - and I had always assumed that "Eskimo" was the same. I own a collection of folklore from Inupiaq storyteller Lela Kiana Oman, for instance, that was originally published in 1959, and is entitled n  Eskimo Legendsn. It would simply never occur to me that it should be banned and suppressed, as a result. To be fair, it would never occur to me that any book should be banned or suppressed, regardless of the circumstances. Far more recently, in 1990, n  Ka-Ha-Si and The Loon: An Eskimo Legendn was published. While I didn't care for the book myself - one of my main critiques, as it happens, was the use of the term "Eskimo," which I found unacceptably vague in a folktale retelling, as it leaves the reader in the dark when it comes to the cultural origin of the story - I certainly wasn't calling for it to be pulled from library shelves. Are we supposed to just discard every book that contains outdated vocabulary, or words that were considered unexceptional in their own day, but offensive in ours? How far should we take it?

So much for the word "Eskimo." But what about the image? Here, I can understand some readers' discomfort, as the artwork certainly does feel very much like a caricature. Then again, it doesn't seem any more like a caricature to me than the figure of the somnolescent tropical islander, or the hayseed farmer who initially warns Marco, at the beginning of the book. Dr. Seuss is an artist whose work relies upon caricature, of all kinds, and I don't perceive any more malice behind this particular example, than behind any others of his that I have seen. That is, of course, a matter of personal experience and perception, and I am alive to the fact that the "Eskimo" image exists as part of a larger trend of stereotypical depiction, rather than in isolation, as a single example. As I mentioned in my review of n  And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Streetn, it is not my place to tell other readers what they should or should not find offensive and/or hurtful in the books they encounter, just as it is not their place to tell me. I have no argument with those who, seeing this single two-page spread, decide they would rather avoid the book altogether, and choose not to share it with the children in their lives. The world is wide, and there are many books in it. Readers looking for children's books with a culturally authentic depiction of Inuit peoples, by the by, can do no better than turn to Inhabit Media, an Inuit-owned publisher based in Nunavut, Canada, whose children's catalogue is almost universally excellent. But I digress. It is possible to acknowledge that there are some outdated and potentially insensitive elements in McElligot's Pool, but to still believe, either that the book still has something to offer, or that it should, as a matter of principle, be left up to the individual whether to read it. I happen to believe both of these things, and I find the decision to suppress it deeply disturbing and offensive.

I have seen a number of false arguments put forward around this issue, both in the commentariat and by private citizens on the internet. The first is that these books have no artistic and/or literary merit, and would be small loss if they disappeared. This is demonstrably false, both in the case of n  And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Streetn, which I reviewed a few days ago, and here, with McElligot's Pool. These are marvelous books of high quality, books which have enchanted and entertained generations of readers, becoming a part of our culture and our heritage in the process. Which brings me to the second false claim: to whit, that these books are not particularly popular, do not sell well, and will not be missed. Here again, I must disagree. I have worked in the book business for thirty years now, and have never known a time when Seuss books - including these six titles - didn't sell steadily. There is a consistent demand for them, and the reaction of the public to the news of this recent decision by Dr. Seuss Enterprises - at least fifteen Seuss titles have shot onto Amazon's bestseller list in the past week, and library requests have skyrocketed (42 outstanding hold requests for McElligot's Pool at the NYPL, as I write this) - demonstrates that the bulk of the citizenry is either uncomfortable with, or deeply opposed to this development. In the end, people want to decide for themselves what to read, and what they should think about it. Finally, I have seen the ludicrous argument that this is no book banning, and that there is nothing censorious going on here, with the decision to cease publication of these six books. I'll repeat something I wrote in my review of n  And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Streetn to answer this disingenuous claim:

This book may not have been censored by any government entity, nor outright banned by any institution, but the final effect of this decision to self-censor will be the same as if it had. Publication will stop, the book will become scarce, libraries will begin removing copies from their shelves - this has already begun at some libraries - and the books will become less and less accessible, even to those who want to read them. It strikes me that the harm caused by this - authors' estates and publishers pulling their own books, libraries cooperating to purge objectionable material - will be far greater than anything these Seuss books could inflict. Truly, a sad moment for the children's literature world, and for the world of letters in general.