Tiger in My Soup by Kashmira Sheth Illustrated by Jeffrey Ebbeler
Published: 2013 by Peachtree Publishers
Reasons why I liked this book, and chose it as Book of the Week:
The title caught my attention. Without even knowing what the book was about I knew I had to read this book, just by the title.
The cover is just as eye-catching and attention grabbing as the title is.
Beyond that, the use of the colors green and yellow are carried throughout the book. Green just happens to be one of my favorite colors, so it’s like me and this book were meant to be, right?!?
The young boy, the main character, is wearing a strainer on his head. And he’s fending over a hulking tiger with nothing but a wooden chair and a leather belt. He’s one brave boy!
The end papers show the little boy and the hulking tiger playing a game of hide and seek behind cans of alphabet soup.
I like soup. So does the main character.
But he doesn’t like tigers in his soup.
Either do I.
The big sister is in charge – of the house, the lunch, and of our main character. But she’s too busy listening to music and reading her book to be bothered with “being in charge.”
The little boy likes to read, but he prefers when someone – his sister – reads to him.
She isn’t interested in his book about a tiger. She much rather read her own book.
I bet there are no tigers in her book. Or her soup for that matter.
Instead of having his sister to read to him, the little boys looks at the pictures himself. He looks at them right-side up. He looks at them upside down. He looks at them from back to front, and front to back.
But sometimes reading isn’t fun by oneself.
I love the little bird that accompanies our main character. He reads over his shoulder.
When he’s bored, the little boy seeks out his sister to ask her if she’ll read to him … now. And she still says no.
She’s paying no attention to him at all. Until he tells her he is hungry.
She makes him soup, and goes straight back to her own book.
I love that both of these characters are bookworms.
In the midst of the steam, it’s where the little boy notices that there’s something puffing up in his soup. And that something is a tiger.
And it seems that only the little boy can see the tiger.
Boy did that tiger look mean.
In order to protect himself, his sister, and his soup the boy stands up against the tiger. Stabbing him with his spoon, chasing him around the kitchen, pulling his long tail and until the tiger is dizzy with pain. He even launches a missile – a cracker – at him.
The little boy’s soup is officially cold. His sister, not only volunteers to heat it up, but to finally read to him.
And when she roars, the tiger within her comes out.
The book truly shows the power of a child’s imagination.
The writing that fills this book is just as vivid as the illustrations that pop off the page.
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