Ten Little Unlucky Boys

There has been halabaloo, loads of angriness and arguments in Iceland the last few weeks about the return of the children's book "ten little niggers" or in Icelandic "tíu litlir negrastrákar". The book is about ten little black boys who one by one dies until there is only one left who meets a girl and together they have children until they were ten again.

Parents of black and semi black children in Iceland have been furious about this because both the story and the drawings come from a time when there was a lack of knowledge of how wonderful people can be of all the colors from pale beige to dark brown.

If i had been around when the book had been in remaking I would have made a little, just a little change,... I would have called the book ten little boys. There would be no racism at all in the book if it was called that. I don't think it matters what color the paintings are if they were just called happy boys or clumsy boys but the word nigger is wrong to place in children's literature.

Even Agatha Christie changed the title of her book Ten Little Niggers into the better title "And Then There Were None" (all of them died in that version).

Then some say that the book is republished in the memory of the illustrator Muggur. I know for a fact that he could draw better than this and you can see that in the book Dimmalimm, so this book could have just stayed in a museum I think.

Most of the old child stories have been made milder through the years, Cinderella's sisters don't get their eyes poked out by doves, Gulliver does only travel to the Lilliput land, the two first pigs do not get eaten by the wolf and the icelandic santa mother has lately become a pretty nice lady who doesn't eat bad behaving kids.

I think the book shouldn't have been published but now it is to late, so parents, just educate your children will you!

Here is a little sample from Gulliver's travel to Brobdingnag.

When dinner was almost done, the nurse came in with a child of a year old in her arms, who immediately spied me, and began a squall that you might have heard from London-Bridge to Chelsea, after the usual oratory of infants, to get me for a plaything. The mother, out of pure indulgence, took me up, and put me towards the child, who presently seized me by the middle, and got my head into his mouth, where I roared so loud that the urchin was frighted, and let me drop, and I should infallibly have broke my neck, if the mother had not held her apron under me. The nurse, to quiet her babe, made use of a rattle which was a kind of hollow vessel filled with great stones, and fastened by a cable to the child's waist: but all in vain; so that she was forced to apply the last remedy by giving it suck. I must confess no object ever disgusted me so much as the sight of her monstrous breast, which I cannot tell what to compare with, so as to give the curious reader an idea of its bulk, shape, and colour. It stood prominent six feet, and could not be less than sixteen in circumference. The nipple was about half the bigness of my head, and the hue both of that and the dug, so varied with spots, pimples, and freckles, that nothing could appear more nauseous: for I had a near sight of her, she sitting down, the more conveniently to give suck, and I standing on the table. This made me reflect upon the fair skins of our English ladies, who appear so beautiful to us, only because they are of our own size, and their defects not to be seen but through a magnifying glass; where we find by experiment that the smoothest and whitest skins look rough, and coarse, and ill-coloured.