^ Moon_Lover ^

Keller, T. (2020). When you trap a tiger. Random House.

Genre

Newbery Medal book 

Target Age Group

Ages 9-11

Plot summary

When You Trap a Tiger follows Lily, her mother, and her older sister Sam in their move across the country to live with Lily’s grandmother. When Lily learns that her grandmother is sick, she is visited by a tiger who asks Lily to make a deal. The tiger wants her grandmother’s stories in exchange for helping her to recover from her sickness. Lily must decide whether she trusts this tiger to really help her grandmother and whether she has the courage to hear her grandmother’s stories at all. 

Justification

I chose this book because it is a Newbery Medal Award winner. I was initially drawn to this book because I was interested in the way that the author would handle themes of sickness and grief for a young audience. I was also interested in the way that the magical realism would play into the story and its heavier themes.

Evaluation

For When You Trap a Tiger, I will be evaluating the book’s magical realism, its depiction of family dynamics, and its handling of death and grief. To begin, this book engages with magical realism in really interesting ways. When magical things happen, Lily concedes that it is possible that it is just a trick of the light or that there is some other rational explanation for what happened. Lily is never absolutely sure that the magic is real. She doubts the tiger, the magic of the stories, and the star jars that house them. Additionally, Lily's belief in magic is largely tied to her hope in her grandmother’s recovery. She hopes that the magic is real, so for her, it is. Although Lily is the only person who can see and speak to the tiger, the tiger has an undeniable effect on Lily’s inner world. In this way, the tiger is real, at least for Lily. I really enjoyed the way that magical realism was explored in this book. Each reader may have a different opinion at the end of the book as to whether the magic ever really happened, which is a unique way to approach the main themes in the book.

When You Trap a Tiger depicts family dynamics in a relatable, realistic manner. Lily and her older sister Sam are often at odds with each other. Sam does not believe in the tiger or the magic of the star jars, much to Lily’s disappointment. At the end of the book, however, Lily learns that Sam has been scattering rice with her new girlfriend in an attempt to keep her grandmother safe. This kind of magic is something that Sam has never believed in, unlike Lily and her grandmother. In this way, over the course of the book, the reader sees how Lily and Sam come closer together, despite their many differences. Overall, I admire the way that When You Trap a Tiger is unafraid to explore conflicting character traits that real people display, especially in their close relationships. Lily’s relationship with her grandmother is simultaneously tender and detached, and her relationship with her mother is both strained and supportive. This careful characterization makes for a realistic and relatable depiction of its main cast of characters.

[part 1] [part 2]

not the “they don’t get it” that’s fine because they don’t. My problem is with lumping every myct cc into one “these people are bad” pile. Some of them are genuinely nice people, and don’t deserve to be hated on simply because they make the same content as some bad people. And yeah, we don’t know what they’re actually like off camera, so they could be mean or something when we don’t see it, but they could totally also be chill off camera and we wouldn’t see that either.

a thick forest made up of thorny bushes, countless scraps of fabric and armor tangled in the thick of it from past victims

underwater plants that grab on if they are touched but rather than pulling down, they wait until their prey tires and drowns, sinking down to the ocean floor all by themselves

a cemetery where people are laid in bushes and by morning are fully cocooned in vines

deadly berries that, like a parasite, grow alongside the root of a bush with edible berries and imitate their berries perfectly, so that no one would know they are picking poison

dead trees stretching as far as you can see with flourishing wildlife in between

a cursed land in which everything that grows flourishes, but is deadly if consumed, until no creature can live there anymore and it becomes eerily silent, not even a bug to be heard

giant flesh eating plants growing on top of fortifications

plants that, once ingested, take on parasitic properties and grow inside their host until the host passes. the plant uses their body‘s nutrients to root down where they died and flourish quickly, roots intertwining with the host’s skeleton

Grace: *Retroactively freaking out about Doing A Misogyny™*

I LOVE ALL THE MUTUALS I BARELY TALK/INTERACT WITH

I LOVE ALL THE MUTUALS THAT I TALK/INTERACT WITH A LOT

I LOVE ALL OF YOU

your username is now ur ability

Describe it in any way that you'd use it or what it would do

Like mine is rotting in red, so my ability should probably be able to cause any being to decay by infecting their blood or smth

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Does that mean I am a friendly zombie now?

Wait...

Does that imply that I was an unfriendly zombie?

Anyways open tags!!

My username is Mackenzie da artist, the definition of art is to create something from imagination that evokes an emotion or conveys a story or idea that connects us all.

So my ability would probably be to use something from my own or another's imagination/past and make it into real life, that thing would make anyone around it feel a curtain thing. Like say if someone had a nightmare of a creature, I would be able to bring it to life and no matter what it does, even if it just sits there, if anyone is in it's presents they would feel terrified.

My super power is bitchcraft.

@weirdgaycreatureinthebasement @voidtric @milesmoralesnotebook @moss-the-superstar @shemightbefantastic (again) @cityofangeisislying (again)

@weirdgaycreatureinthebasement @catalystofcalamity (again) @111dollboy

The space center never got rid of them or used them, but Stratt said its best they keep them

The Hunter

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