Dr. Seuss book removal dogs Ron DeSantis in New Hampshire

Ron DeSantis is dealing with questions about Dr. Seuss on the campaign trail during his final day in the Granite State.

During a town hall in Hampton, New Hampshire, the 2024 Republican presidential candidate was confronted with remarks from an attendee, who said his sister had a friend who had to remove a Seuss book from a Florida library and thus would not vote for DeSantis.

The speaker didn’t mention which Seuss book was pulled, but it didn’t matter, as it compelled DeSantis again to defend the removal of texts from classrooms and libraries.

Answering the accusation, the Governor described “pornographic books that are in the schools” and how the state has “empowered parents to object to that and, and to have it removed because it’s just not right that that’s happening.” (He did not address left-leaning groups, notably the NAACP, calling for a blanket removal of Seuss books based on “racist propaganda, caricatures and harmful stereotypes.”)

Meanwhile, “activists” are trying to “create a reaction” by objecting, he said, noting that “someone said” Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird” was pulled, but the book is actually on the “Department of Education’s summer reading list.”

The Governor defended one “school in Miami-Dade County” and its decision to remove a work by Amanda Gorman after a challenge in which the author was misidentified as Oprah Winfrey. He previously called this a “poem ban hoax” but didn’t use this phrasing Wednesday.

“There was this book of poems from, I guess a lady that did a poem at (Joe) Biden’s inauguration. And the school decided to move it from elementary library to middle school library. And that was it. And they said that this was somehow, they were banning these poems and it’s like, like, this had nothing to do with the state. So I would just say anything on that is a hoax, our standards are very clear, they are not controversial at all.”

The clarity of those standards is debatable, given Escambia County just pulled 2,000 books for review, including dictionaries, the Guinness Book of World Records, and multiple volumes from Bill O’Reilly.

The Governor also seemed to suggest there’s a threshold of exactly how many books are needed about civil rights icon Rosa Parks.

“They will say, ‘Oh, they’re not allowing this Rosa Parks book.’ So then you go into the library and there are 12 Rosa Parks books, they just didn’t happen to order this other one and they try to say you’re banning it. No. People have to make decisions and that’s the thing with a curriculum, you’re making judgments about what should be in or what should not be in.”

Despite the aggressive curation of titles available in Florida schools, the Governor has said previously he wouldn’t support a national system rating books like movies have been since 1968 by the Motion Picture Association of America.

“You do have this problem with these inappropriate books in the schools. You know, could there, could there be like a rating for some of them? I don’t think that’s necessary because the difference is, like, if there’s a movie advertised, you don’t know what’s in the movie just by watching a 30-second commercial,” DeSantis acknowledged.