"The Tiger Rising is a lush, exotic little gem-this writer's a keeper."-Karen Hesse, Newbery Medal-winning author of Out of the Dust
Walking through the misty Florida woods one morning, twelve-year-old Rob Horton is stunned to find a tiger - a real-life, very large tiger - locked in a cage. What's more, on the same extraordinary day, he meets Sistine Bailey, a girl who shows her feelings as readily as Rob hides his. As they learn to trust each other and, ultimately, to be friends, Rob and Sistine prove that some things - like memories, and heartache, and tigers - can't be locked up forever.
Author description
Kate DiCamillo says of THE TIGER RISING, "Rob Horton first showed up in a short story I was writing. I finished the story, but apparently Rob wasn t finished with me. He hung around for weeks afterward, haunting the other stories I was working on. Finally, I said to him, What in the world do you want? And he said, I know where there's a tiger. Like Sistine, I said one word back to him, Where? THE TIGER RISING is how Rob Horton answered me.""