On Beyond Zebra!

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On Beyond Zebra!
On Beyond Zebra.jpg
Author Dr. Seuss
LanguageEnglish
Genre Children's literature
Publisher Random House
Publication date
May 9th, 1955 (renewed in 1983)
Publication placeUnited States
Media typePrint (hardcover and paperback)
OCLC 7715159
Preceded by Horton Hears a Who!  
Followed by If I Ran the Circus  

On Beyond Zebra! [1] is a 1955 illustrated children's book by Theodor Geisel, better known as Dr. Seuss. In this take on the genre of alphabet book, Seuss presents, instead of the twenty-six letters of the conventional English alphabet, twenty additional letters that purportedly follow them.

Contents

Plot

The young narrator, not content with the confines of the ordinary alphabet, reports on additional letters beyond Z, with a fantastic creature corresponding to each new letter. For example, the letter "FLOOB" is the first letter in Floob-Boober-Bab-Boober-Bubs, which have large buoyant heads and float serenely in the water.

In order, the letters, followed by the creatures for which the letters are the first letter when spelling their names, are YUZZ (Yuzz-a-ma-Tuzz), WUM (Wumbus), UM (Umbus), HUMPF (Humpf-Humpf-a-Dumpfer), FUDDLE (Miss Fuddle-dee-Duddle), GLIKK (Glikker), NUH (Nutches), SNEE (Sneedle), QUAN (Quandary), THNAD (Thnadners), SPAZZ (Spazzim), FLOOB (Floob-Boober-Bab-Boober-Bubs), ZATZ (Zatz-it), JOGG (Jogg-oons), FLUNN (Flunnel), ITCH (Itch-a-pods), YEKK (Yekko), VROO (Vrooms), and HI! (High Gargel-orum).

The book ends with an unnamed letter that is substantially more complicated than those with names. A list of all the additional letters is shown at the end.

Analysis

Image of the imaginary letters in On Beyond Zebra! as rendered in the Constructium typeface. Seuss Letters.GIF
Image of the imaginary letters in On Beyond Zebra! as rendered in the Constructium typeface.

Judith and Neil Morgan, Geisel's biographers, note that most of the letters resemble elaborate monograms, "perhaps in Old Persian". [2] These letters are not officially encoded in Unicode, but the independent ConScript Unicode Registry provides an unofficial assignment of code points in the Unicode Private Use Area for them. [3]

Legacy

Some of the animals from On Beyond Zebra! appear in the 1975 CBS TV Special The Hoober-Bloob Highway . In this segment, Hoober-Bloob babies don't have to be humans if they don't choose to be, so Mr. Hoober-Bloob shows them a variety of different animals, including ones from On Beyond Zebra! and If I Ran the Zoo (1950). Such animals include a Jogg-oon, a Sneedle, a Zatz-it, a Wumbus, and a Yekko. The book was infrequently reprinted. Open Library lists American editions in 1955, 1983, and 1999. [4] A British edition was published in 2012. [5] In the 2008 American animated film Horton Hears a Who! , Zatz-its appear as residents of the Jungle of Nool. [6]

Withdrawal from publication

On March 2, 2021, Dr. Seuss Enterprises announced that it would stop publishing of On Beyond Zebra! in addition to five other Dr. Seuss titles, stating they contained imagery that was "hurtful and wrong". [7] While the company did not specify the problematic content, many observers speculated that the withdrawal of On Beyond Zebra! was due to the character of "the Nazzim of Bazzim". Illustrated riding a camel-like "Spazzim", the Nazzim was interpreted as drawing on negative stereotypes of Middle Eastern people. [8] [9] Kyle Smith of the National Review defended the character, describing him as "a proud-looking camel-riding Arab nobleman", and argued that only someone "hypersensitive" would take offense. [10]

References

  1. ↑ On Beyond Zebra!. New York: Random House. 1990. ISBN   0-394-80084-2.
  2. ↑ Morgan & Morgan, p. 152
  3. ↑ "Unofficial Unicode encoding for the Seussian Latin Extensions".
  4. ↑ Open Library
  5. ↑ World Cat
  6. ↑ "Horton Hears a Who! (2008)".
  7. ↑ Watts, Amanda; Asmelash, Leah (2 March 2021). "6 Dr. Seuss books won't be published anymore because they portray people in 'hurtful and wrong' ways". CNN. Retrieved 2 March 2021.
  8. ↑ Bobic, Chrissy (9 March 2021). "6 Dr. Seuss Books Taken off Shelves Due to Racially Insensitive Content". Distractify .
  9. ↑ "Here are the 'wrong' illustrations that got six Dr. Seuss books cancelled". Vancouver Sun .
  10. ↑ Smith, Kyle (3 March 2021). "Dr. Seuss Gets Blindsided by a Moral Minority". National Review .

Sources

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