The Importance of Sam...

The Rabbit hOle is dedicated to celebrating children’s literature, its creators, and its history in all of its complexity.

Sam and the Tigers is significant not only because Julius Lester and Jerry Pinkney were both seminal creators in the children’s book world, but because the book performs the extraordinary feat of reclaiming a story that once seemed irretrievably lost. Julius and Jerry’s collective reimagining of Helen Bannerman’s 1899 book, The Story of Little Black Sambo, subverts the aggregate histories that rendered the story a racist trope by retelling the story through the lens of their own childhood, and what the book meant to them then.

In the book’s afterward, Lester explains that Little Black Sambo was one of the only books both he and Jerry Pinkney read as children with a Black main character. They recognized him as a hero, despite a derogatory name and stereotypical depiction.

“The biggest challenge for both of us was history. Many whites had loved Little Black Sambo as children and were afraid their love of it made them racists now,” said Lester. “That is not so. Many Blacks, angered and shamed, resolved that it be thrown in the garbage. For many years so had I.

"Yet what other story had I read at age seven and remembered for fifty years? There was obviously an abiding truth in the story, despite itself. I think it is the truth of the imagination, that incredible realm where animals and people live together like they don’t know any better, and children eat pancakes cooked in the butter of melted tigers, and parents never say, ‘Don’t eat so many.’”

The Rabbit hOle is grateful to the Lester and Pinkney estates for trusting us to create an exhibit around this book, and to ensure that children and families can add Sam and the Tigers to their home library.

“Sam and the Tigers has stood the test of time, because it gives readers a front-row seat to a new Sam and his adventures.” said Jerry’s son Brian Pinkney. “Jerry and Julius’s rendering illuminates every child’s ingenuity, creativity and determination. 

“We’re so pleased The Rabbit hOle has chosen to re-release Sam and the Tigers. It’s an important book that continues to be enjoyed by a new generation of readers. Thanks to The Rabbit hOle’s ongoing commitment to books and children, young people and families will now have access to this time-honored re-telling.”