Julius Lester

Sam and the Tigers

By Julius Lester pictures by Jerry Pinkney

Sam and the Tigers is about a little boy named Sam that lives in Sam-sam-sa-mara with his mother and father that are also named Sam. Sam’s parents take him shopping for new clothes for school. He does not purchase your normal color clothes; instead he gets purple pants, yellow shirt, green umbrella, red jacket, and a silver pair of shoes. On the first day of school Sam puts on all his new clothes and feels that he looks good in his bright colored outfit. His mother and father feel that he is brighter than the sun with all those colors, and later on in the book his classmates agree too. On Sam’s way to school he runs in to 5 different tigers one at a time, and by the time Sam meets the last tiger he has given all his new clothes away. Sam starts to feel bad because he has no new clothes and he is down to wearing his underwear to school He then hears the tigers fighting over who looks the best. While the tigers are fighting Sam gets his clothes and hurries off to school. On Sam’s way home that afternoon from school he finds butter in the spot where the tigers had been fighting early that morning. Sam gets the butter and hurries home to ask his mother to mix pancake for supper. The mother fixes the pancakes that night and they invite their neighbors to eat with them. The pancakes turn out to be the orange and back striped just the tigers.

The book reminds me of how people sometime feel they are better than other people around them do to their appearance or what they have in life. Story can teach an available lesson to all readers to not think of ourselves as being supreme because in the end it does not matter. The illustrations in the book detail the events that are happening in the story. I like the way the writer uses the colorful clothes to assist in teaching his lesson about life to the readers.

The author Julius Lester has written numerous stories and has won awards numerous awards for these books. Some of the awards he has won are Newbery Honor Medal, ALA's Notable Book Award, and The New York Times Outstanding Book Award. Mr. Lester likes to write books about difficult subjects that sometimes challenge the norm of what people might think. His books have covered topics about race, God, and faith. Sam and the Tigers comes from a story about one race thinking they are more superior to another and the problems it would cause for the people involved.

Image of book was copied from images on www.yahoo.com on October 13, 2007.