Rosen uses lively language and well-chosen details to move the story of the baby birds forward. Renata witnesses the birth of four chicks as their rosy eggs split open “like coats that are suddenly too small.” Renata finds at a crucial moment that she can help the chicks learn to fly, even with the bittersweet knowledge that it will only hasten their exits from her life. Rather than seeing it as an unfortunate delay of their project, Renata and Papi decide to let the avian carpenters continue their work. One warm night, after Papi leaves the window space open, two wrens begin making a nest in the bathroom. Renata and her father enjoy working on upgrading their bathroom, installing a clawfoot bathtub, and cutting a space for a new window. 3-7)Ī home-renovation project is interrupted by a family of wrens, allowing a young girl an up-close glimpse of nature. Tiger comes to miss his friends, his city and his home, and so he returns to find “that things were beginning to change.” Ensuing pages show animals in various states of (un)dress, sometimes on all fours, sometimes on two feet, cavorting about in colorful settings, and (to paraphrase the closing lines) all feeling free to be themselves. But, much like that other Wild Thing, Max, Mr. This is just the beginning of his adoption of wild ways, however: He sheds his clothing, runs away to the wilderness, roars and generally runs amok. Tiger proudly marches off the recto on all fours. The spread following this wordless one makes great use of the gutter, positioning aghast townsfolk on the verso as Mr. Tiger’s mind, and a few pages later, he embraces a quadruped stance.

When child (animal) characters scamper by, a bipedal horse admonishes them, “Now, children, please do not act like wild animals.” This plants a seed in Mr. Tiger, whose bright coloring is a visual metaphor for his dissatisfaction. All the other animals seem content with their stiff, dull lives, except for Mr. Tiger lives a peaceable, if repressed, life alongside other anthropomorphic animals in a monochromatic, dreadfully formal little town.

There’s a lot to go wild for in this picture-book celebration of individuality and self-expression.

Mr. Tiger Goes Wild by Peter Brown