I read out loud in a Kindergarten class toward the end of their school day....they love it and it gives them some quiet time at the end of their long day. Today I read one of my ALL-TIME FAVORITES- The Story of Little Babaji, by Helen Bannerman, illustrated by Fred Marcellino. I knew this book as a child in the 50's as "Little Black Sambo". The website of Fred Marcellino has a good description of why the book was rewritten, and why it is one of the best you can read to your kids! Read here-
"In late 1994, an Op-Ed article appeared in the New York Times lamenting the writer’s observation that, while the concept of “political correctness” had brought about some worthy alterations of behavior, it had simultaneously diminished some of the texture of our lives. In response to this piece, a librarian from the Mid-west wrote a letter-to-the-editor in which she noted her agreement with the article’s observations, adding that a case-in-point from her own experience was the virtual shunning of a story she regarded as the “best ever written in children’s literature.” She referred to Helen Bannermann’s The Story of Little Black Sambo. This exchange of ideas was highly meaningful to Marcellino, who regarded that book as his childhood favorite, and it provoked an interest in revisiting the work to see whether the text was, indeed, a racist tract. He suspected that his naïveté as a child might have prevented awareness of a negative message. To his delight, he discovered that the story itself was as innocently beautiful as he’d remembered, but the illustrations which accompanied it in the original version were offensive, as were the names of the characters. Upon investigating further, he learned that the story was set in India, where Bannermann was living with her husband, who was stationed there during the Raj. Marcellino realized that he could re-illustrate the story, place the action back into India where it was intended to be, and by merely changing the names of the three main characters, he could leave the text completely intact. The result was his best-selling book, The Story of Little Babaji."
The hardcover version of Little Babaji is a nice one to get- the dust jacket comes off, and the cover is Tiger stripes- to the joy of children!!! I also always explain to kids, when I read to them, what a 'dust jacket' of a book is- they are very interested and it is something even a 3 year old can learn.