A Hmong folktale about Tiger and the clever Bird who tricks her and restores nature’s balance.
“Nine-in-one, Grr! Grr!” sings Tiger happily as she returns from the kingdom of the great god Shao. Shao has told her she will have nine baby tigers every year as long as she remembers his words: “Nine-in-one.” Bird is worried about the prospect of a world full of tigers (tigers who would eat birds!) and sets out to trick Tiger into forgetting her all-important song. Before long, poor Tiger has her song backward-“One-in-nine, Grr! Grr!”-and the balance of nature is ensured.
Blia Xiong came to the United States in 1976, fleeing war torn Laos. She settled in Seattle, and in 1976, she formed a Hmong association to preserve the traditional music, dance, crafts, and stories of her homeland.
Cathy Spagnoli, a professional storyteller in Seattle, started to collect stories from Southeast Asian refugees in 1983 as a way to build cross-cultural bridges. She met Blia Xiong at that time, and they have since worked together on various Hmong tales.
Nancy Hom is a fine artist, printmaker, and graphic designer who is based in San Francisco, California. Her medium for this book was based on traditional Hmong story cloths, which is a technique of colorful multi-imaged embroidery.
American Library Association (ALA)
Parents' Choice Foundation
This imaginative folktale provides a rare window into the lore of the Hmong people of Laos, yet is anything but parochial or arcane in its appeal. It embraces a range of universal qualities, from loneliness to joyful anticipation to deviousness and guile, and portrays its characters with sympathy and wit. Hom's strikingly colorful paintings, modeled on the appliqued "story cloths" of the Hmong, ably capture a sense of character and landscape and extend the fable's whimsy and good humor.
"Done with such harmonious simplicity that it deserves special attention for its amusing tale and beautiful illustrations."
"The colors are bright, unusual, and strikingly harmonious. A lovely, authentic book from a culture that is virtually unrepresented in children's literature."
"Clearly this is a superior production and an important addition to folk literature for children."
