My late father-in-law hated Dr. Suess. He said he was a communist. I guess he was right.
Ted Geisel was farrrr to the left. He did a lot of adult cartoons during WWII.
However, most of his famous kids’ books are pretty good and fun. The cat in the hat is only mildly “subversive” as in having fun while the authorities are away, but that free “fun” turns hellish and order is restored at the end with relief. Same with “comes back.”
A great treatise on racism or outer differences (including cool kids’ cliques and clothing) is “the sneeches.”. It also deals with race- baiters and shakedown artists, years before the REVrund Jackson invented the push coalition.
Green eggs and ham is mainly about actually listening, and opening your mind, mostly seen at kids’ level of opening your mind to simple things like food, or trying a new activity.
A lot of the stories have simple themes like that and are not offensive.
The most commie kids’ book I’ve found is “the rainbow fish.”. I threw the expensive hard bound copy in the trash rather than even donate it. It’s about a fish who has beautiful glittery rainbow scales, and the other fish won’t play with him cause he’s so beautiful. So a wise octopus tells him to share his scales with the other fish. It ends with each fish having one glitter scale, and all are happy. Pure communism.
“Geisel was a liberal Democrat and a supporter of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal. His early political cartoons show a passionate opposition to fascism, and he urged to oppose it, both before and after the entry of the United States into World War II. His cartoons tended to regard the fear of communism as overstated, finding the greater threat in the Dies Committee and those who threatened to cut the US’s “life line” to Stalin and the USSR, the ones carrying “our war load”
“Though Geisel made a point of not beginning the writing of his stories with a moral in mind, stating that “kids can see a moral coming a mile off,” he was not against writing about issues; he said that “there’s an inherent moral in any story,” and he remarked that he was “subversive as hell.”
Many of Geisel’s books express his views on a remarkable variety of social and political issues: The Lorax (1971), about environmentalism and anti-consumerism; “The Sneetches” (1961), about racial equality; The Butter Battle Book (1984), about the arms race; Yertle the Turtle (1958), about Hitler and anti-authoritarianism; How the Grinch Stole Christmas (1957), criticizing the materialism and consumerism of the Christmas season; and Horton Hears a Who! (1950), about anti-isolationism and internationalism.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._Seuss#Political_views