Friday, July 29, 2022

Catch a Tiger by His Toe

Today (July 29th) is International Tiger Day.  Tigers are beautiful animals.  They are also scary.  So I have no desire to catch a tiger, by his toe or otherwise.  I don't think the originator of International Tiger Day meant for it to include mythical tigers, but that's too bad.  I chose to include them in my celebration of the day.



When You Trap a Tiger by Tae Keller

(from the book jacket)  When Lily and her family move in with her sick grandmother, a magical tiger straight out of her halmoni's Korean folktales arrives, prompting lily to unravel a secret family history.  Long, long ago, Halmoni stole something from the tigers.  Now they want it back.  And when one of the tigers approaches Lily with a deal - return what her grandmother stole in exchange for Halmoni's health - Lily is tempted to agree.  But deals with tigers are never what they seem!



It's a touching story.  Lily is going through a lot.  She has just moved to a new place, she feels she can no longer talk to her sister the way she used to, she feels that nobody, not even her mom, ever really sees her, she is possibly losing her grandmother and then she starts to see tigers.  Lily is unsure if the tiger is real, and so is the reader.  But in the end it doesn't really matter because whether the tiger walked out of a Korean folktale or out of Lily's imagination, she is here to show Lily a way though the turmoil that has come into her life.  I like Lily.  And I feel for Lily as she tries to figure out what is the right thing to do, not just for her grandmother but for her family and herself.  You get to see Lily grow through the story and become her own person.  And as she tries to figure out what her future will be she learns about her family's past, and how that is a part of her too.  There are a few moments when I thought Lily was acting too young for her age and overly naïve.  And at the very end, when she realizes something about her sister it felt like it was just tacked on. It wasn't a complete surprise, you did get hints, but it was presented in a way that made it feel like an afterthought.  But my criticisms are small.  I enjoyed the book, grew to like the characters and cried a little with them in their grief.

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