When an unexpected feline guest drops in at Sophie’s house, she invites him in for tea. Gluttony ensues. Is this what the Year of the Tiger portends?

The plot of classic children’s book The Tiger Who Came to Tea is really quite simple. One day, while Sophie and her mother are having tea, a hungry tiger comes to the door and invites himself over, then proceeds to eat the whole tea spread as well as what’s cooking for supper, everything in the fridge and pantry. When Sophie’s father comes home, there’s nothing to eat so they go to a café. Sophie’s mummy adds ‘Tiger Food’ to the grocery order, in case the tiger comes again. “But he never did.”

Illustrator and author Judith Kerr was just nine years old when her family – German Jews – fled their homeland to Switzerland. The year was 1933 and her father had been put on a Nazi hit list for criticising the party. By 1936 they ended up in Britain. During the Second World War, Kerr worked for the Red Cross and, following the war, studied art on a scholarship. Shortly after, she met her husband and they worked together at the BBC.

Bored at home when raising her two children, she ‘invited’ the tiger into their lives. “We’d go for a walk and have tea, and that was it really. And we wished someone would come. So I thought well, why not have a tiger come?” When the children went to school she turned it into a picture book, which is now more than 50 years old and has never been out of print.

Many people suspect that the tiger is a Nazi metaphor, a seemingly benign but deadly uninvited guest, though Kerr has always maintained that the tiger is just a tiger and has addressed Nazism in her other work, notably the semi-autobiographical When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit and its sequels. Kerr was awarded an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 2012 and died in 2019, at the ripe age of 95.

You may in fact consider the tiger an apt symbol for Kerr herself. The tiger is the third animal in the Chinese zodiac and represents strength, courage and nobility. This Lunar New Year, starting 1 February, will be the Year of the Water Tiger: one especially attuned for change, confidence and fierce independence. Just don’t let it go begging for tea.

This article originally appeared in AUSTCS enews 28 January 2022. Mailchimp no longer allows external links to the original newsletter.