Kate DiCamillo: The Tiger Rising

It's impossible to read this lovely story without a lump in the throat. Rob, rendered a misfit by the unexpressed trauma of his mother's death, is walking in the woods when he comes across something wonderful and terrible - a tiger in a cage.

He meets fiery Sistine Bailey, also a misfit, who is waiting for a father who never comes. Little fingers of warmth start creeping back into Rob's life, until the day when he must decide what to do about the tiger which, like his own feelings, cannot be left locked up for ever.

This is not just a feel-good story, some of it will make you feel really bad (the bullying sequences are especially brutal and cruel, and Rob's passive, tuning-out response is terrifying).

The writing sometimes hints at fairytale mysticism, but it always submerges softly back into a sharp, modern-day tale about grief and loneliness, and the private, inner lives of children.

Candlewick Press

$29.95