(From the publisher) Walking through the misty Florida woods one morning, 12-year-old Rob Horton is stunned to encounter a tiger—a real-life, very large tiger—pacing back and forth 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.

An extraordinary new novel of friendship by Kate DiCamillo, author of the celebrated debut novel Because of Winn-Dixie.

About the Author

	© Candlewick Press

(From the publisher) It's the pipe dream of many an aspiring author: Publish your debut novel, claim a spot on The New York Times bestseller list, and rack up an astonishing array of awards, including a Newbery Honor, the Oscar of children's books. For Kate DiCamillo, author of the runaway charmer Because of Winn-Dixie, it was a dream come true—and nobody could have been more surprised than she was. "After the Newbery committee called me, I spent the whole day walking into walls. Literally," she says. "I was stunned. And very, very happy."

Kate DiCamillo was born in Philadelphia, but moved to Florida when she was five years old on the advice of a doctor who suggested that a warmer climate would help soothe her chronic pneumonia. "People talked more slowly and said words I had never heard before, like 'ain't' and 'y'all' and 'ma'am,' " she recalls of her first impressions. "The town was small, and everybody knew everybody else. Even if they didn't, they acted like they did. It was all so different from what I had known before, and I fell swiftly and madly in love."

Indeed, it was homesickness for Florida's warmth that helped inspire Because of Winn-Dixie, which Kate DiCamillo describes as "a hymn of praise to dogs, friendship, and the South." The author was experiencing one of the worst winters in Minnesota, where she had moved when she was in her twenties. "I was missing the sound of Southern people talking," she says. "And I was missing having a dog. One night before I went to sleep, I heard this little girl's voice with a Southern accent say, 'I have a dog named Winn-Dixie.' I just started writing down what India Opal Buloni was telling me."

Kate DiCamillo's second novel, The Tiger Rising, is "considerably darker" than Because of Winn-Dixie, she says, "but there's light and redemption in it." As in Because of Winn-Dixie, the story began with the appearance of a single character. "Rob Horton showed up in a short story I wrote and then hung around the house driving me crazy," she says. "I finally asked him what he wanted, and he told me he knew where there was a tiger." Like Opal in Because of Winn-Dixie, Rob struggles with the loss of a parent—a theme that the author admits may be connected to her own father's leaving her family when she was five years old—and ultimately discovers the healing power of friendship. "I don't think adults always realize how much friends mean to kids," Kate DiCamillo says. "My friends have been the saving grace in my life."

Until recently, Kate DiCamillo faithfully set her alarm clock for 4:00 a.m. to put in some writing time before heading off to work at a store selling used children's books. While she now is able to devote her time to writing—and so can wake at a more reasonable hour—her regimen remains as disciplined as ever: two pages a day, five days a week.

"E. B. White said, 'All that I hope to say in books, all that I ever hope to say, is that I love the world,' " Kate DiCamillo says about her passion for writing. "That's the way I feel too."