  | Book Details Title: When You Trap a Tiger |
Book DescriptionReview “Roars to life with just a touch of magic.” —Kirkus, starred review“A heartfelt reminder of the wonder and beauty in our everyday lives.” —Booklist, starred review“Deeply moving… vulnerable and mythic storytelling in the vein of Erin Entrada Kelly and Kacen Callender.” —School Library Journal, starred review“Keller’s (The Science of Breakable Things) #OwnVoices journey through Korean mythology begins with a fantastical quest and slowly transforms into a tale about letting go and the immortality that story can allow.” — Publishers Weekly, starred review“It’s a complex, satisfying story, one that foregrounds family and healing alongside a love for Korean folklore.” —Bulletin, starred review”This beautiful book reminds us that, even in a world filled with stolen stars, crafty tigers, and family secrets that spring from folklore, the most powerful magic of storytelling is the story we decide to tell about ourselves.” —Kat Yeh, author of The Truth About Twinkie Pie“An intoxicating mix of folktale, fantasy, friendship and love (and tigers!). Through a series of challenges–and also a lot of laughter–Lily (a.k.a. Lily Bean, Eggi, Little Egg) finds out what she is made of. She is a character who’ll stay with me–and whom I already miss!” —Marie Myung-Ok Lee, author of Finding My Voice and Somebody’s Daughter“An ambitious and bewitching brew of Korean folklore, magical realism, and classic coming-of-age story, When You Trap a Tiger is a tender tale as unique as it is universal. Keller’s writing shimmers with magic, heart, and hope.” —Ali Standish, author of Before I Was Ethan Praise for Tae Keller’s The Science of Breakable Things:Named one of the Best Books of the Year by NPR, Kirkus Reviews, and the Chicago Public Library!“A compassionate glimpse of mental illness accessible to a broad audience.” —Kirkus Reviews, starred review”A winning story full of heart and action.” —Booklist, starred review”Holy moly!!! This book made me feel.” —Colby Sharp, editor of The Creativity Project”Natalie is an engaging narrator whose struggles at home and with her peers ring true.” —Deborah Hopkinson, award-winning author”Inspiring, emotional, and heartwarming.” —Melissa Savage, author of Lemons Read more About the Author TAE KELLER was born and raised in Honolulu, where she grew up on purple rice, Spam musubi, and her halmoni’s tiger stories. After high school, she moved in search of snow, and now lives in New York City. She is also the author of The Science of Breakable Things. Visit her at TaeKeller.com, follow her monthly love letters at bit.ly/lovetae, and find her on Twitter and Instagram. Read more Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. 1 I can turn invisible.It’s a superpower, or at least a secret power. But it’s not like in the movies, and I’m not a superhero, so don’t start thinking that. Heroes are the stars who save the day. I just—disappear.See, I didn’t know, at first, that I had this magic. I just knew that teachers forgot my name, and kids didn’t ask me to play, and one time, at the end of fourth grade, a boy in my class frowned at me and said, Where did you come from? I don’t think I’ve ever seen you before.I used to hate being invisible. But now I understand: it’s because I’m magic.My older sister, Sam, says it’s not a real supersecret power—it’s just called being shy. But Sam can be rude.And the truth is, my power can come in handy. Like when Mom and Sam fight. Like right now.I wrap myself in invisibility and rest my forehead against the back-seat window, watching raindrops slide down the side of our old station wagon.“You should stop the car,” Sam says to Mom.Except Sam actually says this to her phone, because she doesn’t look up. She’s sitting in the passenger seat with her feet slammed against the glove compartment, knees smashed into her chest, her whole body curled around her glowing screen.Mom sighs. “Oh, please, we don’t need to stop. It’s just a little rain.” But she ticks the windshield wipers up a notch and taps the brakes until we’re going slug-slow.The rain started as soon as we entered Washington State, and it only gets worse as our car inches past the hand-painted welcome to sunbeam! sign.Welcome to Halmoni’s town, a town of nonstop rain, its name like an inside joke.Sam smacks her black-painted lips. “K.”That’s all. Just one letter.She tap-taps her screen, sending bubbles of words and emojis to all her friends back home.I wonder what she’s saying in those messages. Sometimes, when I let myself, I imagine she’s writing to me.“Sam, can you at least try to have a good attitude about this?” Mom shoves her glasses up on her nose with too much force, like her glasses just insulted her and it’s personal.“How can you even ask me that?” Sam looks up from her phone—finally—so she can glare at Mom.This is how it always starts. Their fights are loud and explosive. They burn each other up.It’s safer to keep quiet. I press my fingertip against the rain-splattered window and draw a line between the drops, like I’m connecting the dots. My eyelids go heavy. I’m so used to the fighting that it’s practically a lullaby.“But, like, you realize that you’re basically the worst, right? Like, this is actually not okay—”“Sam.” Mom is all edges—shoulders stiff, every muscle tensed.I hold my breath and think invisibleinvisibleinvisible.“No, seriously,” Sam continues. “Just because you randomly decided that you want to see Halmoni more, that doesn’t mean we want to uproot our entire lives. I had plans this summer—not that you care. You didn’t even give us fair warning.”Sam’s not wrong. Mom told us only two weeks ago that we were leaving California for good. And I’ll miss it, too. I’m going to miss my school, and the sunshine, and the sandy beach—so different from the rocky coast at Sunbeam.I’m just trying not to think about that.“I thought you should spend more time with your grandmother. I thought you enjoyed that.” Mom’s tone is clipped. The rain has gotten heavier, and it sucks up her focus. Her fingers white-knuckle the steering wheel. None of us like the idea of driving in this weather, not after Dad died.I concentrate on the steering wheel and squint a little, sending safety vibes with my mind, like Halmoni taught me.“Way to deflect,” Sam says, tugging at the single streak of white in her black hair. She’s still angry, but deflated a little. “I do enjoy spending time with Halmoni. Just not here. I don’t want to be here.”Halmoni’s always visited us in California. We haven’t been in Sunbeam since I was seven.I gaze out the windshield. The landscape that slips by is peaceful. Gray stone houses, green grass, gray restaurants, green forest. The colors of Sunbeam blur together: gray, green, gray, green—and then orange, black.I sit up, trying to make sense of the new colors.There’s a creature lying on the road ahead.It’s a giant cat, with its head resting on its paws.No. Not just a giant cat. A tiger.The tiger lifts its head as we approach. It must have escaped from a circus or a zoo or something. And it must be hurt. Why else would it be lying out here in the rain?An instinctive kind of fear twists in my stomach, making me carsick. But it doesn’t matter. If an animal’s hurt, we have to do something.“Mom.” I interrupt their fight, scooting forward. “I think . . . um . . . there’s . . .”Now, a little closer, the tiger doesn’t look hurt. It yawns, revealing sharp, too-white teeth. And then it stands, one claw, one paw, one leg at a time.“Girls,” Mom says, voice tense, tired. Her annoyance with Sam rarely bleeds onto me, but after driving for eight hours, Mom can’t contain it. “Both of you. Please. I need to focus on driving for a moment.”I bite the inside of my cheek. This doesn’t make sense. Mom must notice the giant cat. But maybe she’s too distracted by Sam.“Mom,” I murmur, waiting for her to hit the brakes. She doesn’t.Sometimes the problem with my invisibility is that it takes a little while to wear off. It takes a little while for people to see me and hear me and listen.Listen: This isn’t like any tiger I’ve seen in a zoo. It’s huge, as big as our car. The orange in its coat glows, and the black is as dark as moonless night.This tiger belongs in one of Halmoni’s stories.I lean forward until the seat belt slices into my skin. Somehow, Sam and Mom continue to bicker. But their words become a low hum because I’m only focused on—The tiger lifts its enormous head—and it looks at me. It sees me.The big cat raises an eyebrow, like it’s daring me to do something.My voice catches in my throat, and I stumble over my words. They come out choked. “Mom—stop.”Mom’s busy talking to Sam, so I shout louder: “STOP.”Finally, Mom acknowledges me. Eyebrows pinched, she glances at me in the rearview mirror. “Lily? What’s wrong?”She doesn’t stop the car. We keep going.Closer—closer—And I can’t breathe because we’re too close.I hear a thud and I squeeze my eyes shut. The inside of my head pounds. My ears ring. We must have hit it.But we keep going.When I open my eyes, I see Sam, arms folded across her chest, phone resting by her feet. “It died,” she announces.My pulse is a wild beast as I scan the road, searching for horrors I don’t want to see. Read more Customers Review: Ever since she was a small child, Lily’s Halmoni has told her stories about tigers and warned her of their duplicity. When Lily’s family moves to Washington and she sees a tiger in the middle of the road, she learns that the stories her Halmoni told her are tangled with half-truths, stars, and family secrets. In an effort to save her Halmoni from her terminal illness, Lily traps the very tiger that she was warned about — but will it help heal Halmoni, or will the terrible stories grow teeth?–From the moment Lily looked out of the car window and spied a tiger in the rain, this story had my heart. It’s so much more than a novel about a girl learning to deal with the loss of her beloved grandmother — it’s a story about the blending of generations, the blending of cultures, and the blending of magic, myth, and reality. The very real and extremely raw challenges that Lily faces (moving to a new town, making new friends, dealing with a terminally ill family member, growing apart from her sister and mother) are infused with magic in a way that keeps readers questioning what is real and what is merely imagined.One of the most obvious examples of this is that Lily repeatedly encounters and converses with a tiger, but only in the dead of night, and once after she admits to having fallen asleep. It would be easy to write off the tiger as a figment of her sleep-deprived imagination, but at the end of the story, the tiger clears a path through the rain — a path which Lily’s sister, Sam, can clearly see. Of course, Halmoni can see the tiger as well, but there are several heartbreaking scenes sprinkled throughout the novel that make it clear that hallucinations are a side effect of her brain cancer. So what is real, then? What power do words, stories, and tigers have?As someone who doesn’t know much about Korean folklore and spirituality, I was fascinated with the mythology and descriptions of ritualistic practices such as kosa and using mugwort for protection. The author’s note at the end of the novel delves further into the author’s connection to her Korean heritage, and it’s definitely worth a read.As a reader, writer, and teacher, I love this book because it is a story about stories. Lily finds inner-strength, yes, but it’s clear that words have strength, too. Ultimately, her power comes from being brave enough to forge her own story.
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7 reviews