Word: sambo
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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REMAKING OF SAMBO...
...going to be politically correct in the resuscitation of the children's classic The Story of Little Black Sambo [BOOKS, Sept. 9], let's at least get the facts correct. Anyone who has ever read the original Sambo story knows it has nothing to do with Africa, but was set in India. For one thing, wild tigers are not found in Africa; they exist only in Asia. Also, Africans are not the only black people in the world. The dark-skinned folk in the story have characteristics similar to those of an ethnic group in southern India. To assume that...
What the move to bring back Sambo unhappily reveals is that we have less sophistication as adults than we did as children. But happily the original version of the story is still obtainable. I intend to order mine right away, before the book burning begins. AUSTIN MASON Little Sioux, Iowa...
That two retellings are coming out at once is, according to all concerned, quite coincidental. Both new volumes were created by respected figures in children's literature, men in their 50s who were read Sambo when they were young but who'd kept it out of the hands of their offspring. "As a child, I liked the little boy and the story but I felt very bad about how he was depicted," says Julius Lester, an African-American writer who, along with illustrator Jerry Pinkney, also black, has reconfigured the book as Sam and The Tigers (Dial). "The original...
...Herb, head of the Education Library at Pennsylvania State University. But the authors say people's initial horror is soon overcome. "At first people's mouths drop open," says Lester. "They say, 'Have you lost your mind?' But after they read the new version, they love it." Perhaps even Sambo deserves a second chance...