Mr. Tiger Goes Wild

This book is hard to describe. Mr. Tiger lives in a world of anthropomorphic animals who only dress in formal clothing that seems to date from the 1920s. For example, creatures ride on penny farthing bicycles and wear top hats, waistcoats, and bow ties. Mr. Tiger is bored with being "proper." He wants to be "wild." He starts by walking on four legs instead of two, and chasing and playing with kids. He roars and apparently runs across the rooftops. Then he takes off all his clothes, making his friends upset. They tell him to go out into the wilderness, so he does. He has fun playing in the wilderness, running around and roaring and stuff but then he's lonely, so he comes back and puts clothes on, different and more casual clothes. He notices that in his absence, the other creatures in his town started playing more and being less proper. The last few pages say, "Mr. Tiger felt free to be himself. And so did everyone else." And it shows a bunch of animals in the forest with hats on but no other clothing, running around on four legs.

I'm not really sure what the point of this is. It's pretty. The author's note has a picture of the author and it says, "Hello. I am Peter Brown, and it is my professional opinion that everyone should find time to go a little wild." I guess.

The world of the town is very colorless with the exception of Mr. Tiger, who is bright orange. Everybody else is brown and gray, as is everything in the town. When he gets out into the wilderness, it's lush and there's a lot of green and other colors. When he gets back to town, it's slightly less colorless.

It's a weird book. It's got a message but I'm not sure it effectively communicates that message. I guess Mr. Tiger's benevolent rampage convinces everybody else that they should be a little less stuck-up? I don't know. It just seems strange that when he comes back to town, things are different. There's no real reason for that. Clearly, he had been in the town before, so he had some effect on, but there's no reason for them to have changed in his absence rather than while he was there. It just doesn't make any sense.