Here is life lived as a fantastical experience, lit by an imagination that shimmers and bursts like fireworks. This Seuss book is a joyride of verse and ridiculous creatures that has some problematic images among the fanciful illustrations. I'll bring one back, too," equating a person from another culture and an exotic animal. Gerald says, "A Mulligatawny is fine for my zoo / And so is a chieftain. There are also stereotypical portrayals of Middle Eastern characters, including "Persian princes" and a desert "chieftain" riding a beast called a Mulligatawny. The men are carrying an exotic beast in a large cage balanced on their heads, and atop the cage is the young White narrator, Gerald, with a rifle. However, the book, which was first published in 1950, features racist and great-White-hunter stereotypes and insensitive imagery, including an illustration of two barefoot, bare-chested Africans wearing grass skirts and large nose rings, and three Asian men with long, stringy mustaches and wearing tunics and wooden sandals. Main character and narrator Gerald McGrew imagines all the fantastic beasts he'd find in his travels around the world, which he'd then put in a very different kind of zoo. Seuss' If I Ran the Zoo won a Caldecott Honor.
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