America is again in a period of civil rights activism, and one of the key places that racism continues to hide is books for young people. Was the Cat in the Hat Black? deftly diagnoses this systemic problem and offers concrete suggestions on how we may combat it in children's and young adult literature.

• Introduction: Race, Racism, and the Cultures of Childhood


• 1. The Strange Career of the Cat in the Hat; or, Dr. Seuss's Racial Imagination


• 2. How to Read Uncomfortably: Racism, Affect, and Classic Children's Books


• 3. Whiteness, Nostalgia, and Fantastic Flying Books: William Joyce's Racial Erasures vs. Hurricane Katrina


• 4. Don't Judge a Book by Its Color: The Destructive Fantasy of Whitewashing (and Vice-Versa)


• 5. Childhoods "Outside the Boundaries of Imagination": Genre is the New Jim Crow


• Conclusion: A Manifesto for Anti-Racist Children's Literature

Philip Nel is University Distinguished Professor of English at Kansas State University. His many books include Crockett Johnson and Ruth Krauss: How an Unlikely Couple Found Love, Dodged the FBI, and Transformed Children's Literature (UP Mississippi, 2012), Tales for Little Rebels: A Collection of Radical Children's Literature (NYU Press, 2008, co-edited with Julia Mickenberg), The Annotated Cat: Under the Hats of Seuss and His Cats (Random House, 2007), and Dr. Seuss: American Icon (Continuum, 2004).