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Item Barcode | Collection | Call Number | Status | Item Holds |
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Summary
Summary
" The Tiger Rising is a lush, exotic little gem-this writer's a keeper."-Karen Hesse, Newbery Medal-winning author of Out of the Dust
Walking through the misty Florida woods one morning, twelve-year-old Rob Horton is stunned to find a tiger-a real-life, very large tiger-locked in a cage. What's more, on the same extraordinary day, he meets Sistine Bailey, a girl who shows her feelings as readily as Rob hides his. As they learn to trust each other and, ultimately, to be friends, Rob and Sistine prove that some things-like memories, and heartache, and tigers-can't be locked up forever.
Author Notes
Kate DiCamillo was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on March 25, 1964. She received an English degree from the University of Florida. At the age of thirty, she moved to Minneapolis, Minnesota and worked for a book warehouse on the children's floor. After working there for four and a half years, she fell in love with children's books and began writing. DiCamillo wrote the 2001 Newbery-honor book, Because of Winn-Dixie, which was adapted into a film in 2005. In 2004, she won the Newbery Medal for The Tale of Despereaux, which was also adapted into a movie in 2008, and for Flora and Ulysses in 2013. Her other works include the Mercy Watson series, The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane, and The Magician's Elephant. She was named the National Ambassador for Young People's Literature by the Library of Congress for the term 2014-2015.
Kate's title, Raymie Nightingale, mde the New York Times bestseller list in 2016.
Reviews (2)
School Library Journal Review
Gr 4-6-Kate DiCamillo's novel (Candlewick, 2001) is about the distances between people, and the giant leaps of faith that are sometimes needed to bridge those distances. Rife with symbolism, this story focuses on Rob's lossesAnot just of his mother who died of cancer, but his loss of his father, who is struggling with his own grief. Rob has two talents: keeping his emotions under cover, and carving wood into beautiful shapes. Life at the Kentucky Star Motel in rural Florida, where Rob's father works as a handyman, is lonely and bleak until a caged tiger appears in the woods and a new friend helps to open Rob's heart. Sistine, the new girl at school, also suffers, but she is alive with raw emotions and spunk. She and Rob form a friendship, and together they set out to free the tiger whose caged existence represents their own limited horizons. Film and Broadway actor Dylan Baker reads with a gentle drawl, changing his voice just enough to breath life into the characters. Even so, the characters remain rather contrived. In particular, the figure of the tiger is not vividly portrayed, partly because it carries more symbolic weight than the story can plausibly sustain. DiCamillo's somewhat heavy-handed symbolism leads to an inconclusive climax that ends with Rob's father shooting the tiger after Rob and Sistine release it. The sacrifice of the tiger as a condition for Rob's bonding with his father and his emergence as a character is not an ending that will appeal to animal lovers.-Emily Herman, Hutchinson Elementary School, Atlanta, GA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
DiCamillo's evocative, emotionally rich story about a boy caught in the powerful grip of grief is given even more dramatic depth via Baker's (Thirteen Days; The Tailor of Panama) sensitive and colorful performance. Rob has become a "pro at not-crying" in the six months since his mother died. Rob's father hasn't allowed such displays and has moved himself and Rob to a new town and a new start. But Lister, Fla., hasn't been so great. Rob is plagued by a mysterious rash on his legs and endures the endless taunts of bullies; his father struggles as the maintenance man at a local motel owned by a demanding blowhard. Everything changes, however, when Rob stumbles upon a real-life caged tiger in the woods behind the motel and shares his discovery with Sistine, a spitfire of a girl who has just moved to town. The tiger soon stands in for the wild pain and anger that have overwhelmed Rob and Sistine, and they become determined to find a way to free the animal (and their feelings). Baker's pacing is perfect and his turn as sassy, no-nonsense motel housekeeper Willie May crackles. His other characterizations shine as well, especially the often haughty-sounding Sistine and the brief, humorous bits as unctuous Southerners at Rob's school. Ages 8-up. (Apr.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Excerpts
Excerpts
That morning, after he discovered the tiger, Rob went and stood under the Kentucky Star Motel sign and waited for the school bus just like it was any other day. The Kentucky Star sign was composed of a yellow neon star that rose and fell over a piece of blue neon in the shape of the state of Kentucky. Rob liked the sign; he harbored a dim but abiding notion that it would bring him good luck. Finding the tiger had been luck, he knew that. He had been out in the woods behind the Kentucky Star Motel, way out in the woods, not really looking for anything, just wandering, hoping that maybe he would get lost or get eaten by a bear and not have to go to school ever again. That's when he saw the old Beauchamp gas station building, all boarded up and tumbling down; next to it, there was a cage, and inside the cage, unbelievably, there was a tiger--a real-life, very large tiger pacing back and forth. He was orange and gold and so bright, it was like staring at the sun itself, angry and trapped in a cage. It was early morning and it looked like it might rain; it had been raining every day for almost two weeks. The sky was gray and the air was thick and still. Fog was hugging the ground. To Rob, it seemed as if the tiger was some magic trick, rising out of the mist. He was so astounded at his discovery, so amazed, that he stood and stared. But only for a minute; he was afraid to look at the tiger for too long, afraid that the tiger would disappear. He stared, and then he turned and ran back into the woods, toward the Kentucky Star. And the whole way home, while his brain doubted what he had seen, his heart beat out the truth to him. Ti-ger. Ti-ger. Ti-ger. That was what Rob thought about as he stood beneath the Kentucky Star sign and waited for the bus. The tiger. He did not think about the rash on his legs, the itchy red blisters that snaked their way into his shoes. His father said that it would be less likely to itch if he didn't think about it. And he did not think about his mother. He hadn't thought about her since the morning of the funeral, the morning he couldn't stop crying the great heaving sobs that made his chest and stomach hurt. His father, watching him, standing beside him, had started to cry, too. They were both dressed up in suits that day; his father's suit was too small. And when he slapped Rob to make him stop crying, he ripped a hole underneath the arm of his jacket. "There ain't no point in crying," his father had said afterward. "Crying ain't going to bring her back." It had been six months since that day, six months since he and his father had moved from Jacksonville to Lister, and Rob had not cried since, not once. The final thing he did not think about that morning was getting onto the bus. He specifically did not think about Norton and Billy Threemonger waiting for him like chained and starved guard dogs, eager to attack. Rob had a way of not-thinking about things. He imagined himself as a suitcase that was too full, like the one that he had packed when they left Jacksonville after the funeral. He made all his feelings go inside the suitcase; he stuffed them in tight and then sat on the suitcase and locked it shut. That was the way he not-thought about things. Sometimes it was hard to keep the suitcase shut. But now he had something to put on top of it. The tiger. So as he waited for the bus under the Kentucky Star sign, and as the first drops of rain fell from the sullen sky, Rob imagined the tiger on top of his suitcase, blinking his golden eyes, sitting proud and strong, unaffected by all the not-thoughts inside straining to come out. The Tiger Rising. Copyright (c) 2001 Kate DiCamillo. Candlewick Press, Inc. Cambridge, MA Excerpted from The Tiger Rising by Kate DiCamillo All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.