By Kate DiCamillo
A boy who's packed all his sadness away finds a caged tiger in the woods, and freeing it finally lets his own grief loose.
Rob Horton lives in a run-down Florida motel with his father, and he has learned to keep everything he feels, especially the grief over his mother, shut tight in an imaginary suitcase so he never has to open it. Then one rainy morning he finds a real tiger, pacing in a cage in the woods behind the motel. On the same day a fierce, furious new girl named Sistine shows up at school and refuses to be pushed around by anyone. The two of them, each carrying something heavy, have to decide what to do about the tiger, and by the end that choice cracks Rob's suitcase open at last.
It's short and the words stay plain, so a reader who can't yet sit for a thick novel can finish this one, but DiCamillo packs an enormous amount of feeling into that small space. The tiger is a real animal and also stands for everything Rob won't let himself feel, and a thoughtful child will sense both at once while a younger one just follows the story of a boy, a girl, and a big cat. That double layer is exactly why it holds a wide range of readers in one room: everyone gets a story, and the ones who are ready get much more.