![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() In fact, in the French-language edition of Bannerman’s book, Sambo Le Petit Négre (1948), the little boy is depicted eating tiger-striped pancakes!īannerman herself was no stranger to India. Not only does he recover his possessions, his mother, Black Mumbo, uses the ghee to make pancakes for the entire family. However, it is Little Black Sambo who has the last laugh when the tigers begin fighting among themselves and ultimately chasing each other around a tree until they are transformed into a pool of ghee. Published first in England in 1899 and then in the United States the following year, it tells the story of a little boy who is forced to surrender his clothing and his umbrella to four tigers so as to avoid being eaten by them. The neatly packaged narrative that the dust jacket offers belies the fraught history of Bannerman’s original text, The Story of Little Black Sambo. Printed within a minaret-shaped column on its dust jacket, these lines preface one’s reading of Harper Collins’ children’s book The Story of Little Babaji (1996). ![]() For this new edition of Bannerman’s much beloved tale, the little boy, his mother, and his father have all been given authentic Indian names: Babaji, Mamaji, and Papaji. As a gift for her two little girls, wrote and illustrated The Story of Little Black Sambo (1899), a story that clearly takes place in India (with its tigers and ‘ghi,’ or melted butter), even though the names she gave her characters belie that setting. ![]()
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