JUDITH KERR — THE TIGER WHO CAME TO TEA

There are certain things in life that are genuinely frightening: things we should run away from as fast we possibly can. Born in Berlin in 1923 Judith Kerr had a horrifically acute knowledge of true fear. When she was nine, the National Socialists threatened to arrest her father, a prominent Jewish journalist, and the family fled to the UK. This book — which she also illustrated, was first published in London in 1968, when she was in her mid-forties — is, behind the scenes, a meditation on unnecessary fear. Little Sophie and her mother are at home, when an enormous, very stripey Tiger turns up. He doesn’t say much. But he’s obviously extremely hungry and thirsty, because he eats all the food in the house, drinks all the milk and ‘all the water in the tap’. He gives Sophie a ride on his back, Then he politely, but silently, takes his leave. And that’s the whole story — except for one thing. Daddy gets back shortly afterwards and, of course, now the family can’t have tea — since there’s nothing left. But that’s OK. They go to the quietly bustling local high-street, where the lights are coming on in the dusk, and have something nice to eat at a cosy cafe. A 'tiger', we may say, is a thought that distresses us. A child may worry there’s a monster under the bed; as adults we may privately dread, perhaps, the prospect of our fortieth birthday, hosting a dinner-party, a tedious administrative task or a school reunion. To have a tiger to tea is — in effect — to domesticate a potential fear: to learn to feel at home with it, to see what might even be nice or fun about it and to find simple solutions to the problems it may bring. The tone of the book is the opposite of alarmist; unlike the panicky voice in our heads, the situation is narrated in the simplest, calmest, matter-of-fact way. Tigers may well - sometimes - come to tea. And we will survive. Judith Kerr is inviting us to internalise maturity and resilience.

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