In recent years, my school has started to accept students with more sever disabilities. We've always been a special needs school, but over the past couple of years we've seen students who functionally cannot read and some who's developmental maturity places them as much as 10 years behind. As a result, I've been on a hunt for reading material that more meets the needs of those students. It turns out, a lot of really good children's material aimed at the 8-12 set has been published in the last 10 or so years when I was distracted by other things.
When You Trap a Tiger is an example of this. It originally came to my attention when it was assigned in my son's fourth grade class. His whole class read the book.
When You Trap a Tiger is a blend of Korean folklore and a family drama. Lily and her sister, Sam, get uprooted from their home in California so that their mother can move in with their grandmother. Being kids, the sisters are upset about being moved away from their home and their friends. Sam in particular is angry.
Lily is shy and more than a little bottled up. She loves her Halmoni (grandma) and feels like everything about her is a little magic. When they were really little, Halmoni used to tell the girls stories about magical trickster tigers. In these stories, the little girls trick the tigers and become the sun and the moon. Lily loves these stories but she and her sister remember the moral very differently
It soon becomes clear to Lily that something is wrong with her Halmoni. That's when a tiger shows up and offers to save Lily's Halmoni if Lily will do a task for her.
I really liked the book. It had me in tears by the end. It did the good job of blending in magical realism to a story that was essentially a family drama. I also really appreciated the way it ended. I won't deliver any spoilers, but it was very satisfying without being cloying or over sentimental.
No comments:
Post a Comment