The Picture Book Tigers (with Mini Grey)

The Picture Book Tigers

A few months ago I made some tiger bookmarks for the Bookmark Project, and then I did a tigermark giveaway on Twitter (formerly known as X) asking for favourite children’s tiger tales. I got a lot of suggestions, and discovered that Picture Book Tigers are simultaneously many things. 

One of my Tigermarks

So I thought I’d give you a quick tour of some of the things Picture Book Tigers can be.

Tigers can EAT YOU UP!!

These are tigers who are just plain dangerous and just want to eat you all up (like a shark or a monster might want to). These Tigers tend to get outwitted.  

 In Whatever by William Bee – our boy who cannot be impressed by anything gets entirely eaten - the worst actually happens. 

In I am a Tiger (by Karl Newson and Ross Collins), Mouse is either masquerading as a tiger or genuinely thinks he is one. 

The embattled tiger gets a bit belittled by the unphaseable Mouse.

 

 

The controversial Little Black Sambo is all about outwitting the tiger. It was publishedin 1899, and Helen Bannerman wrote it to entertain her daughters. 

But through the 20th century, the characters' names and the depiction of Little Black Sambo came to be seen as offensive. For more about the history of this, see The Complicated Racial Politics of Little Black Sambo. 

But it has interesting tigers in it: they are obsessed with eating Little Sambo, but also proud and vain and boastful - and pretty stupid.

 

 

I came across it as a child, and what impressed me was how the outwitted tigers spin so fast round a tree that they melt into butter. Could tigers become butter?

The Sambo tigers wearing Sambo's shorts and shoes, looking very marvellous.

At the end, Sambo's mum makes pancakes with the tiger butter: "And then they all sat down to supper. And Black Mumbo ate Twenty-seven pancakes, and Black Jumbo ate Fifty-five, but Little Black Sambo ate a Hundred and Sixty-nine, because he was so hungry." 

Tigers can get their own back

Tipu's Tiger left, and on the right a moving carboard one I made from a kit.

As a child, I hated tigers being portrayed as the baddies. So I loved Tippoo’s Tiger – the tiger getting the upper paw. Finally the tiger wins. It was my favourite thing at the V&A. And it's a gruesome automaton - the betigered European gentleman waves his arm and makes a wailing sound, and the tiger's inner workings roar, powered by bellows.

Wild Tigers

In The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, Aslan the lion is not a tame lion. Mr Beaver says " 'Course he isn't safe. But he's good. He's the King, I tell you." Mr. Tumnus also says, "He's wild, you know. Not a tame lion." OK, that's about lions, but it also applies to tigers.

Take Mr Tiger Goes Wild by Peter Brown: in a Victorianly dressed world of repressed animals, Mr Tiger rips off his clothes and returns to the jungle. Of course, there's always the moment where he goes too far, but then he helps everyone else to embrace their wild side. 

 

 

Mr Tiger gets wilder...

...the moment when he goes a little too far.

Tigers who are really toys or maybe cats

A total favourite is Tigger from Winnie-The-Pooh: a toy tiger come alive, with irrepressible bounciness. 

In There’s a Tiger in the Garden  by Lizzy Stewart, Nora looks again at the ordinary and discovers the extraordinary and that there is a tiger in the garden. Maybe it is an imaginary friend tiger. Maybe it is a cat transformed.  "I’ll believe in you if you believe in me," it says.

 Here is Stripey the House Tiger (also know as Pepper my cat) trying out being on a cheeseboard.

 

 

When I made this Picnic Tiger for AF Harrold's Book of Not Entirely Useful Advice, I didn't realise that I was subconsciously channelling Pepper. Note the Proud Chest.

Incidentally, domestic cats and wild cats all have a pretty similar body plan. This may be because cats are pretty much perfect. For more about this have a look here with Professor Anjali Goswami (14 minutes in):The Speed of Life: A Deep-Time Perspective.

Carpet Tigers

Tigers are bright, stripy and dangerous – but this bold patterning also means that they look like they’re wearing pyjamas or a big furry onesie. This means they can masquerade as soft furnishings.

 

 

In The Tiger Skin Rug by Gerald Rose, a thin scrawny tiger spots a job opportunity as a rug in the Maharaja’s palace. But then eating leftovers makes the tiger a bit too three dimensional to carry off the rug impersonation.

 

 

 

The Lying Carpet by David Lucas contains another carpet-tiger. Is anything it says the truth? A statue of a little girl wants to know what she is; the carpet invents endless possibilities - but what's the truth, what to believe? A bit more about this here. 

 

 

Life of Pi - illustration by Andy Bridge

 

 

 

Stories and the Truth and what to believe are also at the heart of another tiger tale - Life of Pi by Yann Martell...

Tigers also lose things. In The Tiger Who Lost His Stripes by Anthony Paul and Michael Foreman, a gentlemanly tiger has to solve problems to have his stripes returned. 

In Augustus by Catherine Rayner, it's a smile that's gone missing.

 

The missing smile has returned.

Mysterious Strangers

 

The most famous Picture Book Tiger has to be that one who comes to tea. It's a surprise visit from the unknown and untameable. And I think it's about longing. Longing for something exciting to happen in a day stretching dully ahead, a surprise knock on the door. 

 

But also longing for something big and strong and wild - look how Sophie strokes the tiger's tail as it licks up all the water from the tap, just like your cat would:. 

 More about The Tiger Who Came To Tea by Judith Kerr here, and also here.

Longing for tigers, imaginary friend tigers, tiger avatars

Who do you want to be your perfect imaginary friend, your best ever protector and guide? It has to be a tiger.

Illustration by Dave McKean

 Even better, a magical tiger. Tyger by SF Said takes me to the fearfully symmetrical Tyger of William Blake, staring balefully and burning bright.

 

The Sea Tiger by Victoria Turnbull: underwater we find a heart’s desire Protector Tiger, a big brother guardian sea-angel for a little mer-boy.

 

 

(I'm also here mentioning Jim’s Lion, (written by Russell Hoban and illustrated by Alexis Deacon) even though it's a lion. Jim is very ill, and he he needs an avatar to fight fiercely for him, a finder to come for him in his dreams and pull him back to the world when he has a terrifying operation.)

 

 

Tigers can also be the thing that grown-ups can't notice. Look at the magnificent top-hatted tiger reading a comic book in There’s a Tiger on the Train by Mariesa Dulak and Rebecca Cobb. 

Such a big tiger...

 

I mean, a tiger who reads a comic book couldn't possibly hurt you, could it?

I love seeing from the tiger's point of view here.

More here: the author Mariesa Dulak interviewed by Pippa Goodheart.

  In Tiger Lily by Gwen Millward, Lily's imaginary tiger friend gets the blame when, as all tigers seem to do, it eventually goes a step too far into wild rumpus.

The Tiger at the Zoo

My favourite moment from The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O’Farrell is when young Lucrezia strokes the tigress in her father's menagerie. "The tigress didn't so much pace as pour herself, as if  her very essence was moltten, simmering, like the ooze from a volcano." The tiger's fur is "pliant, warm, soft as down."

The nearest I’ve ever got to a real tiger was at London Zoo. The tiger was just an inch of glass window away. I was baffled by its vivid stripiness, its huge broad head, its colossal paws. And what I really wanted to happen, was for the glass to disappear, and for the tiger to let me, and only me, bury my arms and head in its soft fur, and give it a wild hug.

Tigers seem to be simultaneously avatars, wildness personified, pyjama-wearers, gobblers-up of small boys, mysterious strangers, your heart's desire, your date with destiny, completely unpredictable, jewel bright. Something wild, something longed for, danger just contained, something you dream might love you back – and probably the only place that can really happen…is in picture books. 

 

 

 

Mini's latest book is The Greatest Show on Earth, published by Puffin.