Creator Backlash: Seuss was said to have destroyed the majority of his work because he was displeased with it. One notable book that was published posthumously is Daisy-Head Mayzie, which really wasn't up to par with some of his other work.
Before that, he felt so much regret for the racist anti-Japanese cartoons he drew during World War II that he dedicated Horton Hears a Who! to a Japanese friend, writing the story as an allegory for the US occupation of post-WWII Japan. Certain anti-racism activists attempted to bury his legacy just because of these drawings... to say they weren't met with a good response would be a massive understatement.
In 2021, the Seuss Foundation chose to withdraw six titles (And to Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street, On Beyond Zebra!, If I Ran the Zoo, Scrambled Eggs Super, McElligot's Pool, and The Cat's Quizzer) from publication because they contained racially insensitive imagery and text. Predictably, there were public cries of censorship and Political Overcorrectness, even though it was the foundation themselves who voluntarily chose to withdraw the titles because they felt the titles were no longer appropriate for children.
As a fellow inhabitant of southern California, one of Seuss' closest friends and drinking buddies was none other than crime novelist Raymond Chandler. One of Chandler's private letters even recounts how the two of them had found and rescued a stray cat from a coyote trap.
