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It was probably the Golden Books' "Little Black Sambo". I remember loving that book when I was a kid. I wanted to live in the hut that he did because I thought it looked like a neat clubhouse. I laughed over the way he tricked the tigers, and loved the way he outsmarted them and how his mother/grandmother? made pancakes out of them at the end. The thought of the tigers racing around that tree so fast that they turned into paste fascinated me.
It was only when I grew up that I was surprised to find out about all of the controversy about that book because of its title. I don't think I ever paid attention as to whether Sambo was "black" because he was supposed to be an Asian Indian rather than an African, or even that he was drawn with dark skin. It wasn't even an issue to me; he was just another kid like me but living in an cool exotic place. I got caught up in the story of the kid outsmarting those who were more powerful, and the rest of the issues that bothered people about the book later on wasn't even a blip on my radar.
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