The nineteenth-century French painter who captured the sights of Paris talks about his life and work as if entertaining the reader for the weekend. Includes reproductions of the artist's work and a list of museums where they are on display.
From the University of Florida:
This rather bizarre story is Helen Bannerman’s second book, and it was published 3 years after Little Black Sambo. The narrative centers on Little Black Mingo, a young, ambiguously raced orphan girl who lives with a cruel old woman named Black Noggy. When Black Noggy sends her to collect water, Little Black Mingo encounters a mugger (crocodile). The mugger carries the girl to an island, where it leaves her to serve as a meal for its soon-to-hatch eggs. A mongoose helps Little Black Mingo escape, and the furious mugger eats Black Noggy in revenge. Both the mugger and Black Noggy explode into pieces, and the book concludes with a delighted Little Black Mingo and the mongoose perched on the mugger’s head as they have tea.
This book is notably more violent than Little Black Sambo, containing many illustrations of the bloodied, disintegrated bodies of the mugger and Black Noggy. In Sambo Sahib, Elizabeth Hay defends these disturbing illustrations, writing, “Some adults find the pictures in Little Black Mingo excessively violent. There are two of the explosion in which Black Noggy and the mugger are blown to bits. Children, however, especially those from a secure and loving home, can delight in those pictures. Their understanding of pain in anyone other than themselves is very limited, and they can find Black Noggy’s well-deserved fate very satisfying”.