Lord Tiger

Lord Tiger is one of the titles in Snowflake Books' series: Animal Signs. Adapted from ancient Chinese legends, all based around the mythical Race of the Animals, these stories are well-known and loved by all Chinese children; the books thus provide an informal and accessible means of introducing Western children to an important aspect of Chinese life and culture in the home, and of introducing diversity studies into education. Each book tells the story of one of the animals of the Chinese Zodiac signs, which are also used as the names of the years in the Chinese calendar. Lord Tiger is a very bad tiger - he eats people! The villagers appeal to the Land God, who orders Tiger to behave. Tiger hopes one day to be King of the Animals, so he tries to be good. But when he is very tired and hungry after the Race of the Animals he eats an old lady by mistake. The wise Doctor Wu shows Tiger that. now there is no one to care for the old lady's mother. Tiger is full of remorse and promises to care for the mother himself. He makes friends with a young girl, and when the girl is very ill, Tiger discovers that he has healing powers.Doctor Wu and Tiger agree to work together to heal sick people and Lord Tiger becomes known as the 'Guardian of Children'.As with all Chinese traditional animal stories, their deceptive simplicity is a vehicle for displaying the richness and variety of human character and feeling; Chinese believe the animal year of a person's birth influences character; the animals in these legends display to some extent their respective zodiac qualities, in this case the extremes of wickedness and potential for goodness in one character. It is a story of remorse and redemption. Chinese mothers still leave gifts at the statues of Lord Tiger in the temples, hoping for good health for their children.This is an entirely new version of the old legend, re-written in simple English, suitable for reading to or by young children, or by older children learning Mandarin. The complete text is bi-lingual with colour coded key words and a Mandarin-English vocabulary. The parallel text in Pinyin, using the Roman alphabet, enables readers to pronounce the Chinese characters. Purchase of the book allows access to an animated e-book with audio in English and/or Chinese.Production quality is high, with good quality paper and colour, original full colour illustrations by Chinese artists on every page and traditional binding.