While visiting a 4-H camp once, Terri Birkett, an employee at the Stuart Flooring Corporation ["A Berkshire Hathaway Company"] saw "some college students were using The Lorax to preach a liberal environmental message to children," and knew she had to do something about it.
So in 1994, explains the company's website, Birkett, "took it upon herself to add reason to the rhyme of Dr. Seuss and rewrote his book, The Lorax" from the perspective of the forest products manufacturing industry. The result is Truax.
Truax is an eminently reasonable logger who calmly explains the industry's entirely reasonable perspective to a freaked out, high-strung, self-appointed tree guardian. It's really all so simple and reasonable.
As the industry's online newspaper, the TimberLine put it way back in 1999:
If your elementary school-age children encounter The Lorax, now you have a better response than merely telling them that Dr. Seuss didn't know what he was writing about. Read them Truax.I'm really glad we had this little talk.Traux is available through a cooperative effort of several trade associations in the forest products industry: the Hardwood Forest Foundation, the National Oak Flooring Manufacturers Association, the National Wood Flooring Association, and the Northeastern Loggers Association. More than 200,000 copies have been distributed to public schools; this year, about 20% of them ordered additional copies, according to Stan Elberg, executive director of the National Oak Flooring Manufacturers Association.
20 pages? That's really more of a booklet: TRUAX by Terri Birkett, $9.44 or so [amazon via things magazine]
TRUAX - A children's book [sic] [stuartflooring, pdf available]
Enter, Truax. Exit, Dr. Seuss [timberlinemag]
That's actually a really good book. I can't think of the last children's book where an adult basically said - I don't know the best answer, I'm just trying to find a balance.