The Tiger that Came to Tea - can someone explain this book to me please?

Winter and Fuel, Home and Warmth, Mums and Children, thats the enduring appeal of the story and how surreal things can get when i'm at home with a tiny kid and our imaginations run riot.

Do you all remember as kids going out i the dark with the streetlights on? I do - it was v exciting!

And to go out to tea in a cafe was exciting too!

Lots of our children do these things all the time but it captures a special experience of our own childhoods imo.

Lots of interpretations of the book...that's the whole point of story books isnt it? To capture the imagination of the reader and let them believe what they want...

.... and I love Sophie's bathroom. It was a nice bathroom in those days. Nowadays if we move into a house with that kind of a bathroom suite we are conmpelled to rip it out and add something naff from B&Q with mixer taps!!!

the ginger cat is a 'motif' according to my DH.

I LOVE this book//

One of the earlier threads that gaelicsheep (quite understandably) can't be dealing with looking back through, did.. I recall ... talk about the idea of the mother having had sex with the grocer, the butcher, etc. (basically all the people who come to call on various days of the week)

Gosh had never really noticed Sophie's tights before reading this thread - love them and love the book!!

thousands and MILLIONS of threads on this

The Ginger Cat is superb! I thought she wrote it for her girls after going to the zoo and seeing a tiger. In the stage production there is an "insinuation" that Sophie's uncle sends her a toy tiger for her birthday........

So confusing. However dd is still awaiting the tiger to come and eat everything in the house - she gets quite over excited about it, I can repeat the book verbatim without said book and expect will have to do it with ds too (sigh)

Longstocking I loved When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit. Wasn't it fiction but heavily influenced by events of her childhood? :(

The sequels are great too but there is nothing like the first one. I think I borrowed it from every library I came across several times until I finally bought a copy.

rofl @Spidookly 'If it had been written more recently there'd be a whole series of them' - so true!

DS and I like this as it's beautifully simple to understand when you're tired, and just about the best treat ever is to go to a cafe. Is it weird that I have never noticed the ginger cat?!

I love the book because it is so old fashioned - it's as old as me, vintage 1968! I look at the pics and it is my childhood, eve the idea of the fish & chips cafe which would have been an absolute treat.

And the cafe visit was possibly not as odd an idea to the author - no idea how old she is, but i read an article recently that said that the 1950's was the period when eating out was at its most popular - to do with rationing, and subsidised restaurants - so I imagine that eating out was probably still fairly normal in the 60's.

God.. Do people really read this much into children's books??? The only thought to cross my mind is that it's tremendously outdated..

belle

I wasn't saying that all children's books are rubbish with non-stories masked by pictures, just that some are.

"Do you seriously think that publishers would pay to print childrens books if this was the case?"

Do I think that publishers would pay to print shit books and still hope that people would buy them?

Um, yes, I have actually been in a book shop before. Do you think everything that gets printed is good?

molly

"The priest offered the tiger a sip of communion wine. But he didn't take just one sip. He drank all the wine in the chalice."

Love it :o

There are lots of interpretations. If you google them you will find endless ones. Nazism, Communism, Feminism, any amount of isms.

Or it's a nice story about a tiger.

I find it typical that Daddy comes home and throws money and junk food at the problem.

Personally, o always interpreted it as being about Depression. That it's an unwelcome visitor that turns everything upside down. And the Ginger cat is just that problems seem much smaller when you step outside them.

But it's probably just a tiger.

I live the old ladies in the cafe almost as much as I love mummy's coat.

I have a friend called Sophie who wears very loud tights so DS thinks it's about her :)

On one of the threads about it I wrote a version of it called "The Sctuary Who Came To Tea" but I can't find it!

DH pointed out recently that the only hting the Tiger didn't consume was Mummy's hidden bottle of Gin under the sink!

she wrote a brilliant memoir called 'when hitler stole pink rabbit' which I really enjoyed, very revealing.

Judith Kerr's still alive isn't she? Maybe we could have her on Mumsnet and find out the true story of the Tiger who came to Tea?

Good luck belle!!

Actually thinking about it In dont like how the 'daddy' took them to restautant at end, I mean that would be me i wouldnt wait for DH - I have my cards FFS! - i this what the cock thing is I dont get it why is there a cock thing to it?

Oh F**K just not sure what my lst post says about me or my DS but we are not cocklodgers (whatever they are) - im pretty straight in bed actually and its far too early too say abot DS!

The daddy looks like a partner at my law firm, I do keep meaning to mention it to him!

I have 4 (3 picture book texts and a novel for 9+ years) with a publisher. I was asked to rewrite them so I have to wait to see if she thinks they are good enough to publish. I'm quite lucky really, some writers wait years for a publisher, I only started to write professionally in September. You never really realise how much work goes into a book until you write one though. I'd love to say I make up any old shit and it gets published but it's really not the case.

I heard a theory it was all about a cocklodging husband