Dr.Seuss's book The Lorax, was both widely criticized and praised for speaking about the harsh effects cutting down trees can have on the environment. The book features a mystical animal called the Lorax, an entrepreneur named the Once-ler, and a boy whose name we do not know in the book. The book has been attacked and been called propaganda for demeaning the timber industry, although Dr.Seuss's intentions in writing The Lorax were not malicious. Dr. Seuss himself said, “The Lorax doesn’t say lumbering is immoral. I live in a house made out of wood and print books made on paper. It’s a book about going easy on what we got, it’s anti-pollution, anti-greed”. But that didn't stop Terri Birkett, an employee of Stuart Flooring Company, to come out with The Truax, her rebuttal to The Lorax. Her style of rhyme in The Truax is similar to Dr. Seuss's, but her characters, storyline, and the illustrations are not. Her main characters are a logger known as the Truax, and the antagonist Guardbark, protector of trees. Throughout the book the Truax tells the Guardbark the benefits that forest management and logging has on the environment. In the end, the Guardbark approves of the loggers methods and the timber industry overall.
My essay focuses on the controversy surrounding The Lorax in comparison to The Truax. The research process for this essay was a bit hard. I found plenty of commentators and criticism on The Truax, but finding out how The Lorax has been praised by environmentalists and preservationists was difficult. Especially with The Lorax now in theaters, it seems that all the sources I find comment on the movie and not the book. But I was able to find enough evidence to support my claims and write a fully developed paper. The peer review process was once again very helpful in noticing my grammar/punctuation mistakes and any awkward phrasing. Setting up an appointment with Professor Seeley was probably the best thing I could have done for my essay. She really editted and proofread through everything to make sure that my ideas were well organized and concise.
Here is a Youtube video of the book The Lorax:
and here is the story of The Truax:
Maybe you can compare both and see the similarities and differences in each.