Tale of the Tiger

Reviewed: May 28, 2004
By: Dugald Steer / Illustrated by Nicki Palin
Publisher: Scholastic Books
22 pages, $18.99

Tikka is a little tiger cub who really isn't ready to go exploring, but one morning when he is hungry he decides to see if he can find something to eat. This leads to a series of adventures with a peacock, some monkeys, a variety of smaller creatures, a porcupine and, more dangerously,a python. Mother tiger saves the day here and Tikka learns a lesson.

Texture is not something that gets a lot of attention paid to it when it comes to books, and when it does happen, it's often in the toddler books that are all about texture and nothing else. That's one reason why the Tale of a Tiger is quite delightful. It is embossed so that you can feel the paw prints, the pebbles, the spines on the porcupine, the blades of grass, the leaves and the trees. This technique also lends a kind of 3-D quality to the artwork.

The texturing is achieved on double layers of stiff, high quality paper. It's almost a board-book, This book has a story too, one that is nicely told and fits the artwork very well. The whole package has an old-fashioned feel to it, though the British edition was only released in 2002.

The book concludes with a two page natural history section dealing with all the animals you meet in the story.

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