The Night Tiger

The Night Tiger

Sherryl Clark

Hannah Sommerville

A & U Children, 2026

32pp., hbk., RRP $A24.99

9781760113421

end of day
sunset red
fills my window
dusk romps in
we eat
play
laugh

But then “night drops in like a curtain” hiding the garden and the little boy has to go to sleep.  But he can’t because it is too dark,  shapes “slide and glide into corners, across walls, hang from the ceiling” and no matter his self-talk he still cannot sleep. Slowly though, things begin to lighten as the full moon rises and he is drawn to the window – and beyond…

In this evocative story, written in free verse that is perfectly matched by the moody illustrations, Clark and Sommerville have created something quite magical as they address a child’s fear of the dark and  taken their imagination beyond the shapes and shadows to becoming a tiger, prowling the landscape outside, ruler of the domain rather than small, scared child within it.

I arch my back high, feel my night tiger paws
and night tiger claws stalk across the grass,
flick my tiger tail, twitch my tiger ears,
growl my night tiger groooooowwwwwl.

A peek inside…

We all know that little person whose imagination is bigger than they are and, despite reassurances, who sees the dark as a time of the unknown, the unheard and the unseen – a place of fear and to fear. While there are any number of stories of children facing their and overcoming those fears, few are as powerful as this one, not only because of the marriage between words and pictures but because that marriage means it can be appreciated by a wider age group.  As our young readers emerge from the cocoon of family, and start to venture into the world of sleepovers and school camps, many find they are hamstrung by their fear and deny themselves fun opportunities because they dwell in the world of “What if…?” But if this were shared under the guise of investigating its format as a verse novel, perhaps those children could subliminally face and overcome the harriers they are self-imposing, but are too embarrassed to talk about openly. While they might not share their own concerns openly as their younger peers do, as they discuss what Clark has to say in this particular format, they may project themselves into the story to become the little boy, and perhaps take on board his thoughts and actions. What if a story had the power to show them that their worries are common but can be conquered and a whole new world is waiting to be discovered?

Rather than trying to diminish a child’s fears, acknowledging that the fear of the unknown and unexplained can be very real but it can be vanquished by imagining themselves as bigger, stronger, fiercer and more powerful can be a really useful strategy to draw on helping to develop resilience and courage on the journey to independence. Clark and Sommerville have created an important and powerful weapon in the arsenal.