Bannerman, Helen (1862–1946)
Bannerman, Helen (1862–1946)
Scottish children's writer. Born Helen Brodie Cowan Watson, Feb 25, 1862, in Edinburgh, Scotland; died Oct 13, 1946, in Edinburgh; dau. of Robert Boog Watson (army chaplain) and Helen Cowan Watson; married William Burney Bannerman (surgeon), 1889 (died 1924); children: 2 daughters, 2 sons.
Spent childhood moving from army post to army post throughout British Empire; received LLA through correspondence courses, St. Andrew's University, London (1887); married an army doctor (1889) and spent next 30 years in India, where husband worked to eliminate the plague in Madras and Bombay; wrote and illustrated her most-famous book. The Story of Little Black Sambo (1899), which became a classic in England and US until it was banned for racism from many children's libraries, not so much because of the story, but because of the character's names and her illustrations, which exaggerated and caricatured the facial features of her protagonist (African-American writer Julius Lester introduced a new version with illustrator Jerry Pinkney retitled Sam and the Tigers [1996]); also wrote and illustrated The Story of Little Black Mingo (1901), The Story of Little Black Quibba (1903), Little Dechie-Head: An Awful Warning to Bad Babas (1903), Pat and the Spider: The Bitter Bit (1904), The Story of the Teasing Monkey (1907) and Sambo and the Twins: A New Adventure of Little Black Sambo (1936).