"Sam and the Tigers" is an awesome book! When I was little, I was taken out to a pancake restaurant called Sambo's, complete with illustrations from the original book. I was, at three, obviously intrigued -- my mother, who was working on her M.Ed., told me the story and put it in a bit of context. I remember that she brought home a book from the library about growing up in India, after that. A couple of years later, I asked her a bit more directly about the racism in there -- was Little Black Sambo supposed to be about blacks in America, too? She did fill me in more and I was pretty sad at finding out that a favourite old story was also promoting a lot of racism.

Anyway, when my two girls were in preschool, out came "Sam and the Tigers" and my mom bought that for the girls one visit here. It's so much more clever, fun and fantastic a story! We passed it on to some other kids a few years back -- something I wouldn't have felt comfortable doing with the original book.