# On Beyond Zebra!

On Beyond Zebra! 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.

## 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

Judith and Neil Morgan, Geisel's biographers, note that most of the letters resemble elaborate monograms, "perhaps in Old Persian". 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.

## 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. A British edition was published in 2012. In the 2008 American animated film Horton Hears a Who!, Zatz-its appear as residents of the Jungle of Nool.

## Withdrawal from publication

On March 2, 2021, Dr. Seuss Enterprises, owner of the rights to Seuss's works, withdrew On Beyond Zebra! and five other books from publication because of imagery they deemed "hurtful and wrong". The book depicts a character called "Nazzim of Bazzim". Nazzim is "of unspecified nationality". He rides a "Spazzim", a fantasy-creature resembling a camel. The Vancouver Sun described the "problematic imagery" as "probably the least obvious" of the six books removed from publication.
Kyle Smith of the National Review describes Nazzim as "a proud-looking camel-riding Arab nobleman". Smith argues that only someone "hypersensitive" would take offense at this image.
According to an article of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Nazzim is a "vaguely Arab-looking character". McLaughlin notes that Dr. Seuss' books have been accused of featuring too few non-white people, but the then-recent decision withdrew from publication the ones that do feature non-white people.
According to an article of Distractify, Nazzim "is a man who appears to be of Middle Eastern descent". The animal that he rides resembles a camel.