It's back.... now in ebook form

The Project Gutenberg EBook of Little Black Sambo, by Helen Bannerman ^ | 9/14/2009 | pansgold

[pansgold]

Then we are close in age because it was 1952 when I was 3.

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

Sambo always was a little Indian boy.

[boatbums]

(as Lord Russell put it) an unusually stupid child of ten.

Yeah...that pretty much describes all the Liberals of today!

[Clinging Bitterly]

I don’t think I ever heard the story, but that’s what my mom would call me if I really needed a bath. And I think there was some kind of little rhyme she said sometimes. Maybe it was the Cliff’s Notes.

[Domandred]

Thanks for the tip...and the website. My bandwidth getting a workout atm. LOTS of books to DL.

[Marysecretary]

There was a Sambo’s in Utica that had to close because of the PC crowd.

[Marysecretary]

I love the old childrens’ books, too.

[aruanan]

There was a Sambo’s in Utica that had to close because of the PC crowd.

I thought Little Black Sambo was Indian since there are no tigers in Africa.

[aruanan]

Little Black Sambo and his parents showed grace, love, and intelligence. What in the world is so bad about that? That they looked like someone’s idea of what a stereotypical Negroid person would look like? Well, there are any number of groups in Africa right now that an anatomically exact depiction of them would be called racist by morons here in the States whose lack of experience would fail to recognize an accurate depiction of a true genetic trait that is characteristic of a particular tribe.

[aruanan]

From the story:

And they still ran faster and faster and faster, till they all just melted away, and then there was nothing left but a great big pool of melted butter (or "ghi" as it is called in India) round the foot of the tree.

I thought there was something else in the story that indicated it was supposed to be placed in India, not Africa.

[Marysecretary]

Well, they certainly looked like black Africans in the illustration. The author probably meant Indian but the illustrator sure made them look like Africans.

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

The author probably meant Indian but the illustrator sure made them look like Africans.

The illustrator had probably never seen an Indian (dot not feather).

[LongElegantLegs]

Sure...

[tlb]

>>>Bannerman wrote this story about the little children from INDIA that she admired. It was never even about Africans at all.

Very true. However at least as published in the US, the artwork changed the story. The illustrations were not of a child from India, but instead of a thick-lipped googley eyed child in blackface paint. A common racist caricature of the time.

The story by itself is as harmless as most any other fable. But how it’s been used has tainted it to many.

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

Sorry, but he was Indian and the story is Indian.

You might notice the shoes which are about the only thing the illustrator got right.

[LongElegantLegs]

You’ll have to take it up with Florence and Helen...But I’ve never met an Indian that looked like that.

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

Florence. Helen's illustrations (which were quite bad) showed a different family. They were still black but the clothing was quite different. She also wrote Story of Little Black Mingo, Story of little Black Quibba, Little Degchie-Head: An Awful Warning to Bad Babas, Little Kettle-Head, Pat and the Spider, The Teasing Monkey, Little Black Quasha, Story of Little Black Bobtail and Sambo and the Twins. All the stories were set in India.

[Liberty Valance]

~placemarker~

[MilicaBee]

It was one of my favorite stories when I was little! My father used to read me this from vol. 2 of My Book House, edited by Olive Beaupre Miller: “Little Black Sambo, a Tale of India by Helen Bannerman.” The illustrations are not attributed, but maybe by Don Nelson who did many others in the My Book House series. All the characters are very dark, but clothes and features identify them as natives of India, unlike in the ebook.

[Mike Fieschko]

Next we'll see The Five Chinese Brothers.