I enjoyed Epaminondas and His Auntie being read to me as a small child, and the laughter we shared as he desperately tried to follow directions. I then enjoyed it again learning to read to my siblings and sharing the laughter and his antics with them. As an adult, my sister and I shared the story with our children on tape. My son is now grown and still has that tape, and still recounts the story. It's a story that shares warmth, laughter and the earnest attempts of a child learning to follow instructions.

This is an old Southern children's story that was updated around 1906 by Sarah Cone Bryant, then published and re-published for a century. It's fun and easy to read to children, because they immediately catch on--Epaminondas is just a young child who can never figure out why adults can't say what they really mean. He stays optimistic and confused. Have a nice time following in Epaminondas' footsteps, and read this story to your kids, grandkids, and anybody else who'll listen.

--Jim Reed...

I accidentally came across this listing while searching for a different book, but the title struck a chord in my memory. I am 25 years old, and when I was about 4 or 5, my grandmother would read me this story over and over. I laughed and laughed at Epaminondas and his mistakes; he honestly tried to do the right thing, but because of his aunt's failure to be specific enough joined with the natural ineptitude of a child at that age, he continues to fail. Basically, this story relates how both giving directions clearly and paying close attention to those directions are very important.

This book is obviously quite controversial, given the other reviews on this page. I believe that the controversy is exaggerated for several reasons. First of all, when I was a child, I never made the connection that Epaminondas and his family were black, and that this was a stereotype of black people. While I might have noticed that he was black, I could not have connected his color to his behavior in any way. Only cynical adults and those children who are TAUGHT to notice such things ever would. If this book were written today, it would probably be inappropriate for the book to be written in the fashion that it was, using what was supposed to be a dialect of English spoken by black people in the South in the late 19th / early 20th century. However, to say that this book should be rewritten according to today's political correctness standards is overreacting. I do not for a moment believe that this book was INTENDED to be racist, though it does use inappropriate stereotypes. However, since the intention of the book, in my humble opinion, is benign (and is, in fact, instructional), and along with the fact that the book can be construed as not being intentionally racist (as I never did as a child), it should not be banned or otherwise denigrated. This book could be used as a tool of racists, however, many books including the Bible have been used (and twisted) as negative propaganda against certain groups of people for centuries.

This book should be taken at its face value; it is a children's story with a moral, not a story that is meant to teach that black people are bumbling idiots (by the way, I am very much against racism in any form). To read anything more into it is to be cynical or even to secretly hold racial prejudices against black people that could complement the stereotypes that can be seen in this book.