The Night Tiger
By Sherryl Clark & Hannah Sommerville
Reviewed by Mia Macrossan
Sheryll Clark is a prolific and much- awarded and beloved Australian author of more than 70 published children’s and YA books, including novels, chapter books, picture books and verse novels. She writes both fiction and poetry, something that is reflected here in the rich imaginative story of The Night Tiger.
Her co-creator Hannah Sommerville, also an experienced and awarded illustrator, (including Sunday Skating by Andrea Rowe, Reading to Baby by Margaret Wild, and Charlie’s Whale by Libby Gleeson), has responded to the challenge of the text with atmospheric, evocative and expressive art.
A young child is enjoying the end of the day, eating, playing, laughing. She goes to bed when ‘night drops a curtain over our house and hides the garden‘. She can’t sleep and, drawn by the bright round moon, climbs out the window to explore outside.
Shadowed and striped by moonlight she turns into the night tiger and celebrates the mystery and magic of the night. She encounters the house cat, hears branches creak, noisy crickets, sees a swooping fruit bat and a barn owl. As the night tiger she revels in pouncing, swooping, leaping, even some growling, until a dog howls breaking the spell and she goes back to bed dreaming night tiger dreams.
There is a lot of movement in this story, not the loud rambunctious activity of daytime, but the powerful, mysterious energy of the night. There’s slinking, stalking and pouncing; there’s whisking, rippling and springing – all part of the nightime adventure.
Each double page contains one verse, one long sentence where Sherryl skilfully condenses meaning and images. The text moves and glides across the page, and yes, occasionally leaps and pounces. The illustrations perfectly capture the mood, the movement and the magic, starting with the end papers, the front showing dusk with the setting sun lighting up the treetops and the back the moonlight shining on the clouds, the trees and the house.
A wonderful book to read aloud so that you can enjoy the pace and rhythm of the words, and relish the imagery, but also one you can read by yourself to revel in and explore the glorious art.
Note: I have referred to the child as ‘she’ because that is how I saw her, but you could just as easily refer to the child as ‘he’, since the representation is subtle and can be interpreted however you wish.
The Only Branch on the Family Tree by Sherryl Clark
