The Indian in the Cupboard

Published in 1980, the fantasy novel The Indian in the Cupboard tells the story of a small cabinet that converts a boy’s plastic toy figures into real, if tiny, people, and the misadventures the boy and his best friend have with those visitors. The first of five novels about the magic cabinet, The Indian in the Cupboard has sold more than 10 million copies and been made into a motion picture.

Author Lynne Reid Banks is a former actor and TV journalist who has penned nearly four dozen novels for adults and children, including two that have been made into films. She holds the J.M. Barrie Award for outstanding contributions to children’s arts. The ebook version of the 2010 reprint edition, illustrated by Brock Cole, forms the basis for this study guide.

This book uses the phrase “Indian” to refer to Indigenous Americans. This study guide may also reproduce the author’s use of the term; however, the term is generally used in reference to 19th- and 20th-century depictions of Indigenous Americans on television and in toys, and therefore it is used more to describe the trope/stereotype, not the people. Please see the Contextual Analysis section of this guide for more information on Indigenous terminology in North America.

Plot Summary

On his birthday, Omri’s friend Patrick gives him a toy Indian figurine. His brother Gillon gives him a small metal cupboard, like a bathroom medicine cabinet, found in a back alley. Omri loves cupboards to put things in, and he places the toy Indian in the cabinet. He wants a key that fits its lock, so his mother lets him search through her key collection. One is a fancy key given to his mother by her grandmother; Omri makes a birthday wish, and the key works perfectly.

He places the toy Indian into the cupboard and locks it with the key. The next morning, he wakes to noises from the cabinet. He opens it to find that the toy Indian has come alive. He tries to pick up the tiny man, but he stabs Omri with a very small knife. They talk; the Indian can speak broken English. Omri promises to continue the conversation after school, and he locks the cabinet.

At school, the boy worries all day about the tiny man. He hurries home and opens the cupboard to find a toy Indian lying inside. Sobbing with regret, he locks up the box, but later he hears more noises, opens the cupboard, and finds the Indian alive and hungry. Omri brings him tiny bits of bread, cheese, corn, and a few drops of Coke, a drink the Indian likes.

Fearing the tiny man will turn back into a toy if he leaves him in the cupboard, Omri asks him to come out. He offers him a toy tepee but the Indian rejects it, saying he lives in a longhouse. Omri grabs him and brings him onto the dresser; he apologizes, then asks his name. The man says, “Little Bear,” adding that he is the son of an Iroquois chief. Omri realizes that Little Bear somehow has been transported 200 years from the past to the present day. He builds the Iroquois a tiny tepee out of cloth and toy sticks as a temporary shelter and gives him a piece of cloth for a blanket.

The boy converts a toy horse to a tiny real one, and Little Bear tames it. At one point, the horse’s hoof gashes Little Bear’s leg. Searching for a way to bandage it, Omri puts a toy soldier medic in the cabinet so he can extract small supplies from the toy’s medical bag. A moment later, the toy has become a real, living English orderly demanding to be let out. The soldier nearly faints when he sees Omri, but the boy convinces him he’s merely dreaming. The soldier attends to Little Bear, applying minuscule bandages to the Iroquois’s wound while Omri watches through a magnifying glass. When he’s done, Omri puts him back into the magic cupboard and turns him back to a toy.

At the toy store, Omri meets Patrick, who insists on seeing his Indian toy. Omri relents, and when Patrick sees the living, breathing Iroquoian, he puts a mounted cowboy into the cupboard and gets his own living toy. Omri, angry, warns him that these are real people, but Patrick is too absorbed to care. He tells Omri to keep the cowboy, whose name is Boone, overnight but insists he bring him to school, or he will blab about the whole thing.

Omri puts the cowboy and his horse into a crate, but they escape in the night, and in the morning Boone and Little Bear are shooting at each other. Omri separates them, then cooks up an egg and beans, and the two men eat some from a large spoon. After breakfast, the men get into a fistfight until Omri again stops them. He presents them with an egg cup full of warm water, gets them to bathe, and puts them in his pockets for school.

After school, Omri goes to the store, where he and Little Bear choose a female Indian figurine that Omri will transform into a woman the Iroquois can marry. At home, the key to Omri’s cupboard is missing. A long search turns up nothing. Dejected, the boys watch TV with the tiny men; the movie is a Western, and Boone insults Little Bear, who shoots him in the chest with an arrow.

Horrified, the boys order Little Bear to remove the arrow and replace it with a tiny bandage they construct. Little Bear feels remorse about nearly killing the cowboy.

Meanwhile, Gillon’s pet rat escapes and gets under the floorboards in Omri’s room; his dad pulls up some of the boards but cannot find the rat. Late that night, Omri realizes the key must have fallen through the floorboards. He and Patrick pull up a loose board, and Omri gets Little Bear to search for it; the Iroquoian does so and, chased by the rat, escapes back into Omri’s room, the key in his arms.

Omri quickly puts the English soldier figurine into the cupboard and, using the key, converts the toy to the live medic, who stitches up Boone’s chest and replaces the bandage before returning to his own time. Little Bear keeps watch over Boone during the night. In the morning, Omri converts the female figurine into a beautiful young woman, Bright Stars, who meets Little Bear and agrees to marry him.

Omri and Little Bear agree that Little Bear, Bright Stars, and Boone should return to their proper places and times. Boone recovers, and Omri convinces him and Little Bear to become blood brothers. They celebrate with a feast, featuring tiny food for the small people and regular-sized food for the boys. Finally, the miniature people and their horses gather in the cupboard, and Omri sends them home. All that remains of their visit are little figurines made of plastic.

Omri tells his mom he’s afraid he will lose the key again, and he asks her to hold it for him. The real reason is that he will not be easily tempted to use it again, but it will still be there, just in case.