"Ravi's Roar" by Tom Percival (Bloomsbury Children's Books)

Here's an interesting book that took us a while to truly 'get' - as it seems to mix a couple of messages together before it gets to the nitty gritty of what it tries to impart.

"Ravi's Roar" by Tom Percival is the story of little Ravi, a kid who is the smallest in his family.

It sucks being small, and Ravi often finds that his diminutive size means he gets overlooked for all the good stuff that his older brothers and sisters seem to enjoy.

Even simple things like playing at the playground and not quite reaching those monkey bars. Or being told you're too tiny to go on rides.

When Ravi finally snaps, something amazing happens - he turns into a TIGER! And no one's going to tell a Tiger that they can't do something.

Once Ravi calms down again though, he realises that perhaps losing your temper and having a tantrum isn't a great idea either, as no one wants to play with a tiger, they're far too angry, grumpy and fierce!

Tom does some of his best ever illustration work here, but as we said above, the pacing of the story felt a little off - like we could've done with seeing Ravi's "Tiger" behaviour dotted throughout the book, with the moral twist of no one getting on with his tigrish self perhaps shown in other situations. However, that said, it is one of the few books out there that does deal with children's anger in a stylish and effective way, so deserves kudos for that (and quite honestly, that bit with the ice creams? Yeah we'd have lost it after that too!)

Sum this book up in a sentence: Find out what happens when our tempers get the better of us, in a gorgeously illustrated story ticking diversity boxes and observing common kid behaviour in a neat moral tale.

"Ravi's Roar" by Tom Percival is out on 8th August 2019, published by Bloomsbury Children's Books (kindly supplied for review).