The Story of Little Black Sambo, a chilren's book by Helen Bannerman, a Scot living in India, was first published in London in 1899. In the tale, a boy named Sambo outwits a group of hungry tigers; the little boy has to sacrifice his new red coat and his new blue trousers and his new purple shoes to four tigers, including one who wears his shoes on his ears, but Sambo outwits these predators and returns safely home, where he eats 169 pancakes for his supper. The story was a children's favorite for half a century, but then became controversial in certain countries due to the use of the word sambo. The children's story takes place in a fairy tale India with Caribbean elements, with the tigers racing around the tree eventually being turned into ghee -- translated as "butter" -- and the humans eating inhuman quantities of pancakes.