DiCamillo, Kate. The tiger rising.

Candlewick Press. 116p. c2001. 0-7636-1898-5. $5.99. JSA*

To quote from the review of the hardcover in KLIATT, May 2001:

A National Book Award Finalist, The Tiger Rising is about two 12-year-old friends, which would seem to limit the readership to older children, yet all ages can read it from various perspectives and appreciate it fully. The cover sets the mood: a hazy view of a tiger, a boy, and a girl in a forest, the girl riding the tiger and the whole looking like a tale of fantasy--something like a story of a unicorn. We meet the boy and his father, wounded people mourning the death of the boy's mother some months ago. The father has forbidden the boy to speak of the death, not out of cruelty, just ignorance and pain. Rob is bullied terribly at school, suffers from a disfiguring skin rash, and gets his only comfort from carving wood as his mother taught him to do, and from the wisdom and care of Willie May, who cleans rooms at the rundown motel where Rob's father works.

One day a fierce girl comes to town, angry at her parents' divorce. Her name is Sistine (named after the Sistine Chapel in Rome where her parents met). She becomes Rob's ally, probably because it gives her an excuse to fight. The owner of the motel, a redneck if there ever was one, has obtained a tiger that he keeps in a cage in the woods and hires Rob to feed it. The children are convinced they must free the tiger, which provides the catalyst they need to get beyond their own fetters--emotional ones. The writing is spare, poetic, moving. The setting, rural Florida, seems vividly real as DiCamillo describes it. The story has a timeless quality about it, which reminds me of the book Sounder, for example. I'm sure it will speak powerfully to many readers of all ages. Claire Rosser, KLIATT