Nel chose Seuss because he is such a canonical children’s writer. Seuss, in some of his books, is critical of the abuse of power and critical of discrimination. “If someone like that is nonetheless recycling racial caricature in his work, what does that say about the rest of us? What does it say about all the other children’s writers? That’s why he’s a useful example — because he’s so prominent, but also because his work is engaged imperfectly in some of the problems that it also reproduces,” Nel says. “Someone like Seuss can do some really great anti-racist work, but also racist work at the same time. And it’s not that he is consciously signing on to white supremacy; it’s that his imagination developed in a white supremacist culture, and so it’s influenced by that, and that shows up in his work in ways that I don’t think he intends.”