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Summary: Little Black Sambo: New Sentiments of an Old Stereotype
Review: This book merely re-creates the old sentiments of the antebellum and immediate postbellum discriminatory culture of American society. Sambo is not a stereotype that blacks should embrace. It is apart of the heritage that was given to us, not the heritage that we created. This book only penetrates the sterotypes that have been and still are present in popular culture today. The fact that this book is an educational tool feeding poison to the minds of our youth in America is shameful.
This book is a representation of the stereotypical mirror that forever keeps African-Americans in regression. From the depths of subculture, I arise and when I think that I have found the truth, society hands me lies. Stereotypes penetrate and images delineate perceptions of my race faced with tons of mirrors. "Mirror, mirror on the wall, which perception is truest of all?" I cannot rely on its answer because Little Black Sambo is filling my mind with societal cancer. The mirror reflects society's views and I am not my own person because everytime I look into it, it shows a mammy-like diversion. I do not wish to be a descendent of such a family of images used to ease the minds of the advanced. I blink but I can't seem to erase Sambo's illuminating smile that places my people into exile. Created to advertise? Created to lie? Created to educate? I find it hard to decide because the scheme is to use our image in vain while maintaining revenue from the sales of this book.
My generation is faced yet again with mirrors, broken and haunted by seven years or was that 400 years of bad luck.
When the reflection is inverted, it reveals the past. If reflected once more, it is the present which is still haunted by these images that continue to outlast.
IS this how you want to be seen? Is this how you want to be classified? Forever a mammy, forever sambo, forever a coon, forever black Rambo?
I think we need to clean this mirror.
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Summary: ABSOLUTLY MAGICAL!
Review: i absolutly loved this book. it was given to us as a gift when we had our son. he's 18 months and we read it to him for the 1st time last nite. he feel asleep in the middle of the story, but it is so engrossing and the pictures so wonderful, we kept right on reading to see how it ended! i know when he is old enough to appreciate the beauty within the pages, he will fall in love with it just as his parents did....thank you for such a special book.
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Summary: Hurrah for Sam and the Tigers!!
Review: I am an elementary librarian at Hardin Northern Schools. Almost all of my students are too young to remember the controversy that surround Little Black Sambo, and have never heard the story. I was a child that grew up with that story, and loved it dearly. I also was a child who's mother was afraid the story was sending negative messages to her impressionable children. So at a certain point in our lives Sambo was removed. How delighted I was to see it reappear it this wonderful new light. Pinkney and Lester are masters of their domains, and have proven once again that a good story is a most powerful tool. I introduced this book at the beginning of the year and have had temendous results. Parents and children report having conversations about the old story vs. the new one. It has opened up a new line of communication in many households in our area. How else could you make butter from a yellow shirt, purple pants, green umbrella, red coat, silver shoes, tigers and a very clever hero? Only in a book. Thank you Mr. Lester and Mr. Pinkney!!
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Summary: good storytelling, good illustrations
Review: I feared a sanitized, bowdlerized version. Nope. It's just plain good storytelling, vivid and flavorful language, and good illustrations. It doesn't really matter where you stand on the controversy over LBS. This here is a good book.
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Summary: good storytelling, good illustrations
Review: I feared a sanitized, bowdlerized version. Nope. It's just plain good storytelling, vivid and flavorful language, and good illustrations. It doesn't really matter where you stand on the controversy over LBS. This here is a good book.
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Summary: buying anyway
Review: I'm a teacher, and was delighted to see a poster for this in my school library. I've wanted to read this to kids for a long time. I too loved Sambo and the Tigers as a child.....and yes as an adult recognize it's probably not very happy making for African Americans (that wasn't the first title I remember, and I can't bring myself to write the condescending original title). So I am deeply grateful to Lester and Pinkney for retelling the story a bit, and plan to buy it sight unseen, based on their reputations (a little Eubonics adds flabor if you asks me). As well, I am so deeply grateful to Lester and Pinkney for keeping the stories and legends of the South alive as they have. It's not a "politically correct" issue..... it's a literary heritage shared by *all* peoples of the South; Black, White and Red, Gullah, Cherokee, African....etc. Keep up the good work!
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Summary: Thanks, Julius Lester & Jerry Pinkney!
Review: There is something so basically appealing about this story of a clever boy who outsmarts some hungry and greedy tigers. I adored it as a child, oblivious of its controversial elements. Thanks to Lester and Pinkney, the story is back and better than ever. Children are delighted by the language, illustrations, fun and surprises in this delightful tale.
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Summary: What a horrible example of political correctness!
Review: This is what our society has stooped to-- correcting things that didn't need correcting. Bannerman's wonderful tale has been "desanitized" for our modern "enlightened" age. The sad thing is, it didn't need revision. Anyone with half a brain knows that the original tale was set in India (Tigers live in India, not Africa). My grandmother read the original book to me a decade and a half ago, when I was 5. I loved it and didn't have the slightest inclination that it was unacceptable. Some wide-eyed psychologist, however, thought so, which is why it's been banned. I hope, by the time I have kids, that censorship has not killed the original. I would hate to have to read them this version.
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Summary: A great story made even better.
Review: When I was a little girl, in the sixties, I loved the story of Little Black Sambo, but thirty years later, when my son came across my copy in a box of old books, and asked me to read it to him, I found that it was a lot less charming than I thought it was. Sambo was a great, resourceful little boy and the story was terrific, but as an adult I couldnÕt overlook the obvious condescension that the British author had toward her Indian characters. I hid the book away, but reluctantly, because it really was a good story with a great central character. A few years later, I was thrilled to find this book. Julius Lester has kept everything that I loved about the original and made it even better. The story, about a clever little boy who outwits some tigers who want to eat him, is pretty much the same as Helen BannermanÕs version. Lester has simply transported it from India to a fantastic, fairy tale America, where animals and people live and work together. But what is special here is the way Lester tells the story. His style is funny one minute and breathtakingly beautiful the next. The writing is so fine and musical, itÕs a pleasure to read aloud. And the pictures are brilliant. Jerry Pinkney is one of the best childrenÕs book illustrators around, and this is the best thing IÕve ever seen by him. It has all the lovely qualities IÕve come to expect to find in PinkneyÕs art work à great composition, tasteful use of color (which makes the brighter colors of SamÕs clothes practically glow on the page), and exquisite detail. But this book has magic touches that go way beyond that. Every time I look at this book, I discover new details à the faces in the tree bark and foliage, the little bonnets and jackets on the insects, the facial expressions of tiny, hidden animals recoiling in fear of the tigers à that add to the magic world of this book. My thanks to Julius Lester and Jerry Pinkney for making it possible for me to read this great story to my children again.
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