Tiger! Tiger! Stories of the Big Cat by various writers is an anthology of written works around the most celebrated and revered animal in the subcontinent–the tiger. The anthology has an introduction by educator, writer and naturalist Zai Whitaker.
Before I started reading this book, I wondered how on earth does one start talking to a child about a Tiger. What story would create that one authentic experience of this fascinating animal whose name they say is derived from a Persian word meaning ‘arrow’? An animal that’s sharp as an arrow, moves like one, and maybe even strikes like one.
This book is a basket of stories and poems gathered over the years that brings together fascinating ways in which tigers have been captured by some of the most celebrated storytellers– those from the British era like Jim Corbett, William Blake and Dhan Gopal Mukhejee (with two stories) along with more contemporary ones like Ruskin Bond, Ranjit Lal, Aditi De, Valmik Thapar, Anjana Basu and so on. It includes poems by William Blake, Prathibha Nandakumar, James McIntyre and Ella Wheeler Wilcox. About half of the stories and poems in the collection have been published earlier.