THERE'S A TIGER OUT THERE!

Two children bravely go on an imaginative search for a tiger together.

While the limited text doesn’t have its rhythmic, rhyming cadence, there are echoes of Michael Rosen and Helen Oxenbury’s We’re Going on a Bear Hunt (1989) in this playful story. Two children, one with brown skin and short, curly brown hair and the other with light-brown skin and straight, black hair, are in a treehouse when one asks the other, “Did you know there’s a tiger out there?” They then go in search of it in the yard, reassuring each other along the way. The dialogue-only text is presented with no speech bubbles or tags, sometimes italicized and sometimes not, so it’s sometimes difficult to discern who is speaking. Nor is the relationship between the children ever defined. They could be friends, cousins, or siblings in a mixed-race family. Such details ultimately aren’t important, because what’s clear is that these two kids are as devoted to each other as they are to their imaginative play. The closing text reads: “…we’re together. And nothing scares us. / Never ever! Cross our hearts.” It’s set beside a picture of the two children back in their treehouse, their arms around each other and a toy stuffed tiger on their laps. The illustrations look like collage, with a happy hodgepodge effect that further grounds the story in child’s play. (This book was reviewed digitally with 9.5-by-19-inch double-page spreads viewed at 56 % of actual size.)

There’s a storytime in there.