WASHINGTON (AFP).- US e-commerce giant eBay will halt the resale of six Dr Seuss books on its platform after they were pulled by their publisher over imagery considered racist, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday.

Dr. Seuss Enterprises -- the publisher of the bestselling children's books -- announced Tuesday it was taking the titles, which include "If I Ran the Zoo" and "The Cat's Quizzer," out of print.

The announcement sparked a bidding frenzy for the scrapped books on eBay. The leading bid for a first edition of "On Beyond Zebra!" soared from $14.99 on Monday to $810 on Tuesday.

"EBay is currently sweeping our marketplace to remove these items," a spokeswoman for the company told the Journal.

She added it would take "some time" for the company to review the listings of all its sellers.

The move comes as criticism grows in the United States over the way minority communities have been portrayed in many of the author's books.

Seuss, born Theodor Seuss Geisel in Massachusetts in 1904, published more than 60 books during his lifetime, including some of the most popular children's books of all time.

His most famous works include "The Cat in the Hat," "Green Eggs and Ham" and "How the Grinch Stole Christmas." He died in 1991.

In 2017, a school librarian in Cambridge Massachusetts said she would not accept a gift of ten Dr. Seuss books from then-first lady Melania Trump because many of his books were "steeped in racist propaganda, caricatures, and harmful stereotypes."


© Agence France-Presse