The Tiger Rising
By: Kate DiCamillo / Narrated By: Dylan Baker
Length: 2 hrs and 11 mins
Because children feel, and most certainly DO live with, Pain…
It’s the negative reviews that I check out afore I sit here to write m’ own reviews, esPECially if I feel a Glowing Review coming on. I mean, were there elements and flaws that I absolutely missed or dismissed as I was going along, wallowing in emotions and tears at the end (Oh how I do sooo appreciate the Bittersweet Ending: Bravo to authors for going THERE!!!)?
What I saw whenst perusing those Booo(s)! was that The Tiger Rising was a resounding NO! for Kids, and a resounding NOOOO!!! for grownups wishing to escape the horrors of their daily lives. Like, dude! really?!
So here I come: fresh from a 4-day Intensive Soul Injury Summit with Opus Peace wherein we learned techniques that’ll help us when we work with others… by using them on ourselves first. What I’m saying is that I just spent HOOOOURS over FOUR DAAAAAYS abiding with the Pain that we ALL bring forth from our own kiddyhoods. Not a single one of us escaped childhood without serious distress that we carried and have been numbing out since. And so I posit:
Kids NEED, absoLUTEly NEEED a writer like Kate DiCamillo and stories such as The Tiger Rising.
Sixth-grader Rob Horton’s life is in upheaval what with moving to Florida after the traumatic death of his much-adored Mother. He’s not to speak her name, crying shall NOT be done (After all, he couldn’t stop crying at the funeral, and his gruff father hit him), and as a matter of fact: PAIN is not to be felt. Any dreams and wishes, and pain and emotional anguish: He tucks each of these in a trunk deep within himself, keeping it closed and locked, never to be felt or dealt with. The bullying and abuse he receives at school? He just shuts down and bears the physical pain because, sometimes, it makes his tormentors bored, and they’ll stop sooner.
When the itching, open sores on his legs cause him to be sent home from school (Principal deems them “contagious”), he is relieved. But he doesn’t go home BEFORE he meets the New Girl, Sistine (Like the Chapel) Bailey, a hard-eyed spitfire of a girl who doesn’t care that her dresses get torn as she turns and fights the bullies (Besides which, she haaaates dresses!). When Rob lures her tormentors away from her during one heated confrontation, Sistine relaxes, and a friendship is born.
Both misfits, but Sistine is a firecracker of anger and resentment whereas Rob canNOT endure enough, just so long as he doesn’t need to address/acknowledge ANYthing.
DiCamillo spares us not an iota of life’s cruelties in her writing here, and there’s lovely metaphorical writing throughout. It’s best when The Metaphor meets Personalities. Enter the caged tiger!
Rob can’t stop thinking of the tiger when he finds the pacing creature trapped in a small cage deep in the woods. Can’t stop drawing it, and he’s overjoyed when he shows the tiger to Sistine. He loves how open she is, how alive she is, how, when she sees Beauty, she openly emits an enraptured, “Ooh!” -BUT- the tragedy of the tiger’s existence is readily apparent, and Sistine demands that the two of them free him from his lonely and caged existence.
Not gonna go on but suffice it to say that DiCamillo packs a whole heckuva lot into this barely 2…+… hour Listen. There are consequences when a person looks deeply into their own soul, does the right thing, and Life ain’t pretty or easy. Further, the characters are, quite simply, magnificent and well-fleshed out, given many many layers, even as one is tempted to see them at face value. Full disclosure: I’d started this right after m’ last Summit day, and fell dead asleep. When I woke up, naturally at the end, I thought: Ho-hum, that was sweet. But when I came back to reeeeally find out what I’d missed? DEVastating.
Dylan Baker’s narration starts at Adequate and then takes off from there. As new characters and situations are introduced, so does he take his performance up a notch. He perfectly captures just how much anger and pain are residing within Sistine and Rob, respectively. There’s wisdom voiced by the motel housekeeper, Willie May, and Baker makes her memorable. Ditto the bullies, and Bravo for crafting his performance to suit Rob’s cold father’s arc of growth. Not a dry eye on this end, and I have Baker to thank for that.
Yeh yeh yeh, ya might wanna listen to this before willy nilly handing it off to a hiiiiighly sensitive child, but for each. and every. other child out there? Trust me: Kids KNOW Pain, and here you have it:
The Two Hour Safe-To-Cry that they NEED…
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