At a young age

The book Indian and the cupboard by Lynne Reid Banks, is about a young boy named Omri who is given a cupboard for his birthday. Omri discovers that it is a magical cupboard when he puts one of his plastic toy Indians in there and the following morning the toy turns into real life. As soon as Omri opens the cupboard the Indian, whose name is little bear, jumps out. Both characters are in shock at this point, with little bear more in fear since he is still the size of a little action figure and Omri is 20 times bigger then him. The author portrays little bear more as a “wilderness” type character, with the way he dresses and his beliefs. At one point Little Bear feels threatened and tries to strike Omni with his knife, and he later has a bow and arrow which he harms another character with.


I feel that at this point the author wants the Indian to have a savage type image for kids, which I feel is silly. A person can see the type of native lens that is displayed through out books, movies, and other types of media. The name of the tittle of this book is even politically incorrect. The word “Indian” is not the way to describe a Native American. Kids at a young age are beginning to have a stereotypes embedded in there minds with these type of books. The movie about this book brings more accuracy to my point when the Indian looks more like a war savage on screen. In the movie he has very little clothing and and at one point he has war paint on his face. Throughout early education there are stories and books that kids read that do not tell the truth about our history. Stories of Christopher Columbus or movies such as Pocahontas are severely altered so Early American stories look like there are happy endings where the Anglo looks like he is the good guy and the Native American looks like a Savage and needs the Anglo to save the Native American.

Later in "Indian and the cupboard" another toy character was introduced who also is turned into real life. This character is a white American cowboy named Boone. He has more confidence and feels that he can take on Omri who is much bigger then him. Once Boone is introduced to Little Bear, Boone immediately feels that Little bear was his enemy. This begins to have an almost “Western” type story with cowboys vs Indians, race vs race. Why is it that the cowboy immediately feels that it is ok to conquer the Indian? I felt that the author wanted to display the thoughts of a true early cowboy. An idea of Manifest Destiny was shown where he felt that it was OK and his god given right to conquer anyone who he felt were a threat and who threatened his territory. It wasn’t until later when Omri forced them to settle their differences and become friends.