WHAT are black and white and red all over? The faces of the Brooklyn publishers whose new version of the children’s story Little Black Sambo has plunged them into the middle of a racial storm.

“It’s like taking the word ‘nigger’ and trying to make it a positive,” said Russell Adams, chairman of the Afro-American Studies Department at Howard University in Washington. The children’s story about the little black boy Sambo and his parents Mumbo and Jumbo by the Scottish author Helen Bannerman reflects the humorous portrayal of black people which was common when it was first published in 1899. The book was so popular that it informed and encouraged racist attitudes and the very word “Sambo” came to represent a dismissive, disrespectful view of black people by whites.

The book in its original form was considered so certain to cause racial offence that two updated versions published in America in 1996 took the politically correct route, excising the word “Sambo” from the title and text. Last year Handprint Books decided to republish the story with the text and title intact but with new, more sympathetic illustrations by the white artist Christopher Bing, rather than the original illustrations by Ms Bannerman which portray blacks as wide-eyed, feckless and stupid.

At first the new version was praised by children’s books critics. Christopher Franceschelli, of Handprint, said: “My hope is that those who are children will recognise Sambo as a hero, brilliantly illustrated.”

However, the success was short-lived. “What do we gain by trying to refashion and salvage that text?” asked Richard Yarborough, associate professor of English at the Bunche Centre for African-American Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. “We all have to leave behind cherished images and comfortable ideas, beloved cultural products, as we move into a new world of empathy and respect.”

The publisher remains unrepentant. “We can’t whitewash and erase history,” Mr Franceschelli said. “I can’t undo history but I do hope I can forge a better understanding of it.”

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