Discussion Literature / TheIndianInTheCupboard

The change to the page has been recently reverted, but I first heard about this from an Ask the tropers query last year. It seems to be a British/American edition difference, which might make "Little Bull" the original name. Certainly not the iconic one though.

Publishing blurbs and book summaries of the British editions point to the "Little Bull" name persisting all the way to the final book, while North American books use "Little Bear", so the difference remains.

• Archive.org copy of Key to the Indian - Limited access, but enough of a preview to see the character's name in the summary and table of contents.
• Amazon Kindle edition, Harper Collins UK, Google Books - share a description using the "Little Bull" name

I've seen comments (Amazon Review, library user comment) that the name was suddenly changed to "Little Bear", but from here it's unclear whether that means there was a North American edition that had the "Little Bull" name, or if those readers unknowingly read a British edition before reading the sequels. In the other direction, there's a 1999 book from Canada saying the name changed from "Little Bear".

Huh...well that is interesting, and rather fascinating! I know lots of changes get made in editions of books which come out both in North America and England, but I had no idea this series had such an example. And it's amusing to think that, whatever reason promoted the sudden change here in the States (maybe some publishers thought "Little Bull" had an unfortunate association with both Sitting Bull and the Battle of Little Big Horn?), it was changed so quickly that everyone here, other than those who might have gotten the British editions first, thought Little Bear was the original name and had been all along.

That all said, while I am glad the change was reverted thanks to, as you put it, the iconic nature of Little Bear, I do feel the other name should be acknowledged somewhere on the page, in the Trivia tab if nothing else.