Source
Click here to access the digital edition.
Description
This book centers on Pat, a white boy, who crawls through a telescope bamboo and shrinks down to “the size of his own forefinger” (30). The tiny Pat falls into the web of a hungry spider, but a bird frees him. The spider then chases Pat back into the telescope bamboo, causing them both to grow. A tiger encounters the pair as Pat tries to stop the now rocking-horse sized spider from crawling back into the bamboo. The tiger eats the enormous, poisonous spider and dies, and the book concludes with Pat running “gaily home to tea” (142).
Notably, Bannerman based the book’s hero on her own son, also named Pat.
In Sambo Sahib, Elizabeth Hay uses the illustrations from Pat and the Spider to defend Bannerman’s visual representations of black people in The Story of Little Black Sambo. She writes, “Those who are troubled by Helen’s caricatures of black people should take a look at the caricatures of her own son. To caricature was simply her natural style of drawing; there was nothing racial about it” (Hay 69). However, Bannerman’s portrayal of the white hero in Pat, while somewhat caricatured, does not draw from racist imagery of white people, weakening Hay’s claim.
Creator
Helen Bannerman
Publisher
The Musson Book Company
Publication Date
1905
Format
143 pages; colored illustrations.
Language
English