While many who find Bannerman's story of little black sambo cute,they fail to understand that major complaint that African-Americans and people of African descent had with the story, was the gross exaggerated illustrations that left no doubt that the character was of African descent. while the author mentions India, the illustrations were definitely derrogatory no matter who and what race they portrayed. Julian Lester's "Sam and the Tiger" tells the same story without the gross derrogatory illustrations.