Elizabeth Stanley,
Tyger! Tyger!
University of Western Australia Press, Enchanted Lion Books (U.S.), 2007.

Ages 4-8

Tyger! Tyger!, based on the true story of a sanctuary for endangered Indo-Chinese tigers in northwest Thailand, takes the first stanza of William Blake’s poem as epigraph. A dedicated environmentalist, Elizabeth Stanley traveled to Thailand twice to research the book and is pictured in an author’s note with three of the tigers, whose “fearful symmetry,” she writes, disarmed her.

For centuries, her story begins, Buddhist monks in their jungle monastery lived in harmony with neighboring animals. So when poachers begin killing the tigers, the monks protect these beautiful animals, beginning with two tiny cubs found hiding near the temple gate. Over time, more tigers are brought to or show up at the monastery. Stanley’s glowing pastel illustrations depict the peaceful relations between the powerful orange-striped beasts and their saffron-robed keepers as the monks tenderly bathe and care for them.

But poaching continues, and the monks can’t protect all the tigers who are in danger. One young monk’s vision offers a solution: a moat can be dug around the temple, creating a large island hermitage for the tigers. It is a formidable mission. “The moat must be deep, impassable. The monks’ tools were primitive and many of the men were old and weak. Only a miracle could create such a sanctuary.”

The monks in the story discover that “the miracle is within us,” accomplish their goal, and see the moat filled during the next monsoon. But in real life, the author’s note reports, the moat is still being excavated. For ten years, the tigers have been “kept in large cages…washed by hand twice a day, taken for walks on leashes every afternoon and released for an hour or two in a deep quarry” on the monastery grounds before being returned to their cages for the night.

In previous books Stanley has depicted the mistreatment of bears (The Deliverance of the Dancing Bears, which won the ASPCA Henry Bergh Children’s Book Award), the traditional slaughter of muttonbirds by Bass Strait islanders (Night Without Darkness), and a Tibetan girl’s dream of owning a snow leopard (Yardil), among others. Tyger! Tyger!, a poignant story of kindness triumphing over fear, is a worthy successor to her earlier achievements.

Charlotte Richardson
March 2008