Book Review: When You Trap a Tiger, by Tae Keller, published January 28, 2020, Newbery Award winner 2021, 304 pages, Lexile 590, recommended for ages 8-12 or grades 3-7. Please note: this book is not yet in the pageturner library and requires student requests for books to be purchased.
This is a modern story of a family upended in a move from sunny California to rainy Washington state. Mom had given her girls, Sam and Lily, no choice, virtually no time to adapt, and no reasons; and mom was hellbent on driving straight through, sheer exhaustion detailed on her face. Sam, the older daughter, was loudly furious. Lily, between 6th and 7th grades, was quietly stoic as usual, which is why Sam called her ‘QAG:’ quiet Asian girl. Lily is what society considers a ‘model minority,’ being Korean. It wasn’t a compliment. And Lily has grown accustomed to being invisible, with few friends. Along their route, Lily sees a tiger (1) in front of their car, as BIG as their car. Rain is pouring down in sheets, but the tiger seems to be protected as though it were in an invisible bubble. Their grandma, their halmoni, had told many tales of tigers throughout their childhood, when they lived nearby. The Korean equivalent of “Once upon a time” was “Long. Long ago when tiger walked like a man.” This tiger is one of Halmoni’s, Lily just knows it:
“Sometimes the problem with my invisibility is that it takes a little while to wear off. It takes a little while for people to see me and hear me and listen. Listen: This isn’t like any tiger I’ve seen in a zoo. It’s huge, as big as our car. The orange in its coat glows, and the black is as dark as moonless night. This tiger belongs in one of Halmoni’s stories. I lean forward until the seat belt slices into my skin. Somehow, Sam and Mom continue to bicker. But their words become a low hum because I’m only focused on— The tiger lifts its enormous head—and it looks at me. It sees me.” With this bit of magical realism, Lily, Sam, their mother--and Halmoni, too--will break old stereotypes and change up ancient traditions, although their reality may seem crushing. Ironically, all that will be achieved while actually fulfilling the old story Halmoni so often told them.
In her story, Halmoni told of a tiger who ate a grandma and tricked two sisters into letting it into their home by acting as their grandma in disguise. (Shades of Little Red Robin Hood, here--we‘ll see many references to children’s literature woven throughout the novel.) The sisters flee to ask the Sky God for protection. He allows the younger sister, Eggi, to climb a staircase to become the sun. To the older one, Unya, he gives a rope, and she ascends to become the moon. The tiger is then banished. Lily has been perplexed by this tale, as she thinks Unya, or Sam, should’ve been the sun. After all, Lily, or Eggi, is the quiet, shy, bare reflection of her sister, right? But Sam doesn’t see the tiger, and Lily keeps its appearance to herself. Instead, Lily visits the quaint old library across the street from Halmoni’s house, to research tigers. There she meets Ricky, who is soon a steadfast friend, even if he’s incredibly voluble.
Meanwhile, Halmoni doesn’t seem like her usual self. She’s weaker, and she’s lost weight. She cryptically confides in Lily, “ ‘The tigers looking for me,” she says, running her hand down my arm, lost in thought. “I steal something that belong to them—long, long ago, when I little like you—and now they want it back.’ ‘Wait, what? This story is about you?’ ‘This one real. Tigers real.’ ”
Lily eventually tells Ricky she hopes to track a tiger, after he’s told her that his own grandfather was a tiger hunter. And he’s eager to join the hunt! Ricky’s naturally skeptical about her wanting to build this trap in her grandmother’s basement, drolly remarking that most tigers wouldn’t be interested in exploring a basement, but he’s game if she is. He even helps her build a circle out of cardboard boxes--as though that could possibly contain a wild tiger. He keeps offering to get some meat as bait, which I found hilarious. Lily decides on cookies, instead, and soon enough, the tiger is in the basement:
“Delicious! the tiger cried. But if you give a tiger a rice cake, he’s going to want something to go with it.” This, of course, is how the rapidly evolving story begins in If You Give a Mouse a Cookie. (Notice the author provides no quotation marks for the tiger’s speech--because the tiger is only in Lily’s mind. Nice touch.)
Late one night when her mom and Sam are asleep, Lily hears noises in the bathroom. Thinking the tiger might be there, she approaches to find her grandma hunched on the floor, vomiting. Investigating further, Lily finds:
“On her nightstand, as usual: framed photos of me, Mom, Sam. Also on her nightstand, new: a row of tiny orange pill bottles. A whole family of them. Before I can ask about them, she says, ‘I stole stories.’ I suck in air, trying to understand, but it’s a little hard. My grandmother. Stole stories. From magical tigers.” Halmoni goes on to say she put these stories, which are, in truth, STARS, into little bottles and hid them away. So Lily begins hunting for stars in jars, because the tiger demands them I return for helping her grandma. Naturally, Lily assumes that “helping” means restoring her Halmoni’s health.
I won’t mention all the literary references here (3), but when Lily demands the tiger go away and leave her alone, the tiger answers, “ ‘As you wish.’ ” Is there anybody in the audience who DOESN’T recall Westley’s consistent answer to every demand of The Princess Bride? Soon enough, Lily is desperate for the tiger to return, as grandma starts behaving strangely and seems sometimes even to be hallucinating. Her mom finally discloses that grandma has brain cancer and is not expected to live much longer. Urgently trying to retrieve the last jar for the tiger, Lily accidentally breaks it. But the tiger is no longer threatening; now, the tiger actually seems maternal and is offering advice: “Take your history, understand where you came from and who you are—then find your own story. Create the story of who you are yet to be.” Their mom reveals to Lily that her own past was essentially created for her, since she had to “man up” when their dad died in a car accident eight years earlier, and how she stifled herself her entire life, accepting the ‘model minority’ role. This also provides impetus for Lily to change. And how does mom demonstrate for Lily HOW’s she changing herself? By eating kimchi with her bare hands!
Dying in hospital, Halmoni asks Lily to tell a story, and Lily changes the old one their grandma used to recite. The two sisters of Halmoni’s own tiger story now find a new sky god in the tiger-mother who abandoned her baby; Lily has changed, too, morphing to become an outspoken girl--she now understands she was always meant to be the sun, and Sam the moon, to Sam’s wonderment and appreciation, as she was always pushing, indeed daring, Lily to be more vociferously candid. The tiger-mother invites the sisters to open her daughter’s star jars (the ones sent by her Halmoni when she fled the land). The girls do, and the stars become stories of their own halmoni and previous generations of women. Although the family grieves after Halmoni dies, they are all three present in her last moments. They go on to honor her life--and all those she helped throughout her community--by turning the library’s bake sale into a traditional ceremony called kosa (2), an offering of the first bits of food to the spirits as Halmoni taught them to do.
Besides Lily, Sam, and their mother, every character in the story has been changed. Ricky’s dad no longer sees him as a misfit on the spectrum, but rather as an intrepid life explorer. He’s also hired their mom to be his accountant! The curmudgeonly old librarian Peter has softened to become a friendly advisor and even emotional support, though some crust remains. Sam finds a love interest in Jensen, the happy-go-lucky library assistant. Sam asks Lily for another story, content, finally, to be the moon.
The novel interweaves ancient traditions with new ones we can all create for ourselves. Love can be reinforced, as well as created, in sharing tremendous loss. Communities can be newly generated to include people of diverse backgrounds, and those communities can be stronger than the old BECAUSE they are diverse. And a happy ending doesn’t always mean an absence of suffering or grief; indeed, sometimes suffering and grief inspire or facilitate a happy ending:
“A cure is not about what we want. It's about what we need. The same is true for stories."
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(1) “The tiger (호랑이, horang-i) plays a significant part in Korean culture. Historically, the tiger has been linked with Korea from the beginning. The tiger is strongly associated with Korean culture and is seen as representative to the identity of Koreans. Tigers in Korea are a symbol of strength and power and often seen as the guardian spirit and protector of the Korean people. Tigers are often featured in many Korean folktales and stories. Some people even comment that the Korean peninsula itself resembles a tiger waiting to pounce!... We can see the importance of the tiger in its selection as Korea’s mascot whenever they showcase the country on a worldwide scale. When Seoul hosted the 1988 Olympics ‘Hodori the tiger’ was a popular figure. The white tiger (백호 baek-ho) in particular is historically revered in Korean society and was used as the symbol for the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang.
"The tiger is a popular subject of art and paintings in Korea. Through these works you can see evidence of the tiger’s significance and sacred standing in Korean society throughout history.
"Although occasional rumors persist about sightings of tigers in the DMZ (demilitarized zone) you will of course not encounter wild tigers in Korea today. However, in the past, tigers roamed freely around the Korean peninsula. Tigers coming down from the mountains were a very real and significant threat to people living in Korea. Naturally this has led to many tales giving various warnings and morals about interactions with tigers. It is in these stories that the tale of the tiger’s place in Korea has most been documented.” From: https://gogohanguk.com/en/blog/the-tigers-in-korean-folktales/
“The oldest religious ideas in Korea are called Shamanism today.These are beliefs that the natural world is filled with spirits, both helpful and harmful, that can be addressed by people with special powers called shamans. Herbal medicines, dances, chants and other ceremonies mark the work of shamans, most of whom are women. Though few people believe in the religious ideas today, they do accept old ideas about the natural world and use many ancient herbal remedies.” --https://www.pbs.org/hiddenkorea/religion.htm
(2) “Though it is diminishing in commonality, there are still two variations of Shamanistic funeral rites that survived the Joseon and Japanese periods of Korean history. The kosa, an offering rite to the spirits...The offerings and the prayers are to bring the graciousness of the spirits. The kut/gut is a shamanistic dance declined under various aspects, that the mudang or the paksu carries out in trance. It allows to contact the spirits, to predict the future or to know the past. They vary mostly by the regions from which they originate but have very much the same basic premise, that souls of those who fail to completely or properly transition to the afterlife, can linger and create bad fate for the villages they are from. Much of this idea comes from the veneration of their ancestors that came from the Neo-Confucian teachings that became prevalent just before the Joseon dynasty [founded by Taejo of Joseon in July 1392 and replaced by the Korean Empire in October 1897*] as they were melded with the organic religions of the ancient Korean peoples.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_traditional_funeral
(3) You’ll also find Goodnight, Moon, at least. We’ll learn that these are books their father had read to them before his tragic accident. Only four at the time of his death, Lily no longer remembers her dad's face, but the stories he'd read to them have been inculcated as part and parcel of her essential makeup. I'm reminded here of something one author wrote about literature, “The more we read, the more we become everybody.” Lily’s absorbed her dad through the books he chose for them.