On Beyond Zebra!

On Beyond Zebra!^[1] is a 1955 illustrated children's book by Theodor Geisel, better known as Dr. Seuss. In this take on the genre of alphabet book, Seuss presents, instead of the twenty-six letters of the conventional English alphabet, twenty additional letters that purportedly follow them.

On Beyond Zebra!

Author	Dr. Seuss
Language	English
Genre	Children's literature
Publisher	Random House
Publication date	1955 (renewed in 1983)
Publication place	United States
Media type	Print (hardcover and paperback)
OCLC	7715159
Preceded by	Horton Hears a Who!
Followed by	If I Ran the Circus

Plot

The young narrator, not content with the confines of the ordinary alphabet, reports on additional letters beyond Z, with a fantastic creature corresponding to each new letter. For example, the letter "FLOOB" is the first letter in Floob-Boober-Bab-Boober-Bubs, which have large buoyant heads and float serenely in the water.

In order, the letters, followed by the creatures for which the letters are the first letter when spelling their names, are YUZZ (Yuzz-a-ma-Tuzz), WUM (Wumbus), UM (Umbus), HUMPF (Humpf-Humpf-a-Dumpfer), FUDDLE (Miss Fuddle-dee-Duddle), GLIKK (Glikker), NUH (Nutches), SNEE (Sneedle), QUAN (Quandary), THNAD (Thnadners), SPAZZ (Spazzim), FLOOB (Floob-Boober-Bab-Boober-Bubs), ZATZ (Zatz-it), JOGG (Jogg-oons), FLUNN (Flunnel), ITCH (Itch-a-pods), YEKK (Yekko), VROO (Vrooms), and HI! (High Gargel-orum).

The book ends with an unnamed letter that is substantially more complicated than those with names. A list of all the additional letters is shown at the end.

Analysis

Image of the imaginary letters in On Beyond Zebra! as rendered in the Constructium typeface.

Judith and Neil Morgan, Geisel's biographers, note that most of the letters resemble elaborate monograms, "perhaps in Old Persian".^[2] These letters are not officially encoded in Unicode, but the independent ConScript Unicode Registry provides an unofficial assignment of code points in the Unicode Private Use Area for them.^[3]

Legacy

Some of the animals from On Beyond Zebra! appear in the 1975 CBS TV Special The Hoober-Bloob Highway. In this segment, Hoober-Bloob babies don't have to be humans if they don't choose to be, so Mr. Hoober-Bloob shows them a variety of different animals, including ones from On Beyond Zebra! and If I Ran the Zoo (1950). Such animals include a Jogg-oon, a Sneedle, a Zatz-it, a Wumbus, and a Yekko. The book was infrequently reprinted. Open Library lists American editions in 1955, 1983, and 1999.^[4] A British edition was published in 2012.^[5] In the 2008 American animated film Horton Hears a Who!, Zatz-its appear as residents of the Jungle of Nool.^[6]

Withdrawal from publication

On March 2, 2021, Dr. Seuss Enterprises discontinued publication of On Beyond Zebra! and five other Dr. Seuss titles, citing "hurtful and wrong" imagery.^[7] While the company did not specify the problematic content, many observers speculated that the withdrawal of On Beyond Zebra! stemmed from the character of "the Nazzim of Bazzim". Depicted riding a camel-like "Spazzim", this character was interpreted as a stereotypical portrayal of a Middle Eastern individual.^[8][9]

Kyle Smith of the National Review defended the Nazzim as "a proud-looking camel-riding Arab nobleman", arguing that only someone "hypersensitive" would take offense.^[10] Dan McLaughlin of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette noted that while Seuss's books had long been critiqued for their lack of non-white representation, the company's decision paradoxically removed the very titles that featured such characters.^[11]