Children’s author and cartoonist had a pro-labor past

Like celebrated children’s author Dr. Seuss (Theodor Geisel), Syd Hoff had an earlier artistic life.

Just as Seuss/Geisel had a stint as an editorial cartoonist for New York’s liberal daily “P.M.,” Hoff – best known as the award-winning illustrator and author of HarperCollins’ “I Can Read” series (featuring Danny the Dinosaur, Sammy the Seal and other characters) – drew topical cartoons for The New Yorker, Esquire and Look, plus progressive titles including New Masses, March of Labor and the Daily Worker.

Born in the Bronx, Hoff also wrote the Daily comic strip “Tuffy” from 1939-1950, syndicated to some 800 newspapers. Designated an “essential” effort during World War II, it didn’t keep Hoff from working for the U.S. Office of War Information, drawing Allied propaganda pieces dropped behind Nazi lines.

Also the writers/illustrator of the “Henrietta” series of kids nooks by the Champaign, Ill., Garrard Publishing Co., Hoff drew praise for portraying everyday working-class people.

That was especially noteworthy in a series of editorial cartoons in leftist and labor publications – so much more so that he penned them under a pseudonym, “A. Redfield,” recently collected in a 2023 trade paperback, “The Ruling Clawss,” his first book.

The decade of the 1930s obviously was a different time, but troubling social issues – especially labor’s struggles – are still familiar.

There’s something frustrating yet reassuring to see the same battles now as workers dealt with 90 years ago.