Bibliography:
Bannerman, Helen. 1899.  Little Black Sambo. London: Grant Richards.  Reprinted 2003 by HarperCollins. ISBN: 9780397300068

This week, in recognition of Banned Books Week, Patti wanted to recruit as many librarians as possible to blog about banned books and the freedom to read.  I thought about what I wanted to write about…I could write about banned books and the freedom to read in general.  I could write about well known books being banned, such as The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (racist) or Harry Potter series (witchcraft) or The Grapes of Wrath (profanity).  For a very compelling story of how Grapes of Wrath was not only banned, but burned in California, click here.  When I was surfing around the Internet, looking at different sites and reading lists of banned books, I came across Little Black Sambo.

Little Black Sambo is not great classic literature as many of the challenged and banned books are.  It is not a book with a timely or controversial message, as many of the recent challenged picture books are.  It is a book written over 100 years ago, by a mother for her children when she was visiting India.  She wanted a story that communicated a little about what an exotic place they were in but was also entertaining.  Sambo goes for a walk in the jungle, and meets a series of tigers, who threaten to eat him, but every time Sambo makes a deal with them, and gives them something he has in exchange–his red coat, his purple shoes, his green umbrella.  Later he hears the tigers fighting over all his things, and he gets them back, while the tigers are so angry and so bent on fighting each other, that they held on to each other’s tail and chased each other faster and faster till they melted away into a pool of butter which Sambo scooped up and took home to his mother who put it on pancakes for dinner.

The story itself is quite innocent and fun.  The problems that many have with this book are its portrayal of Sambo and his family as picanninys, racial caricatures of African Americans, even though the story and the family were Indian, not African.  The names, Sambo, Mumbo, and Jumbo, and the illustrations of many editions of the story contributed to this.  Recent retellings of the story have tried to capture the spirit of the tale while removing the racial stereotypes.

The Story of Little Babaji takes Bannerman’s original, and changes the names and details to match those of India.  Sambo becomes Babaji, Mumbo Mamaji, Jumbo, Dadaji.  The illustartions are Indian in detail as well.

Sam and the Tigers is a true retelling of the story by well known and respected African American author Julius Lester, and illustrated by African American illustrator Jerry Pinkney.  In this version, Sam lives in the land of Sam-sam-sa-mara, where everyone is named Sam, and animals and people live and work together.  In this story, Sam is witty and comical and the story maintains the essence of the original while managing to find its own voice.

It is my hope that libraries would have all three versions of the story to share with patrons so that they could see the evolution of the illustrations and the tale, and discuss the portrayal of African Americans, not only in this story, but in popular culture across time.