Books like The Tiger Who Came to Tea

I learnt important life lessons from this book:*Don't try to drink all the water from the tap*Drinking tea from the pot via the spout gets you a mouth full of tea leaves*A single tin of tiger food will fill you up as much as an entire household full of foodThe story is a simple one - what happens when a tiger comes to tea (tea here in the British English sense of a post-midday meal eaten with tea, the content and actual time of the meal correlating with social class and location). The situation isn't just anarchic and chaotic, as the tiger violates the social order - eating all the cakes and sandwiches, drinking all the tea and all the water from the tap- but is also beautifully illustrated. The tiger is a big, sinuous, magnificent looking creature on the page whose behaviour is both human and catlike.The reaction of the child-reader (or auditor) is guided by the exuberant joy of the child in the story, Sophie, who is obviously delighted with this amazing animal that proceeds to turn their lives upside down by eating all the food in the house and drinking all there is to drink (including the single bottle of beer, this is an abstentious household apparently). It's Sophie's reaction to the tiger that is the key to the book she's fully able to enjoy the pure extravagance of the tiger's behaviour, while the representative adult, in a nice touch of realism, comes across as being a bit overwhelmed even though the tiger is polite throughout and minds its Ps and Qs (at least figuratively, I don't recall how often it actually says please and thank you as one does when invited in for tea).Order is restored (although Sophie can't have her bath because the tiger drank all the water) and future tiger related devastation is averted by buying a very large tin of tiger food. I always loved the idea that the one tin of tiger food would satisfy a tiger as much as all the food in the house and all the tea from the pot. Since Judith Kerr, at the age of ten, came to Britain as a refugee I wonder how far the story was for her the transformation of the sinister knock at the door of a powerful presence that would not respect social norms into one that could instead be exciting, joyful and safe. Not a retreat from a world that threatens disruption and disorder, but a celebration of it and the ability to adapt to it.Adult readers may feel that some cultural differences need discussion including the existence of: milkmen, grocer's delivery boys, stay at home mums and decisive dads for example, although my sister reading this at nursery to a gaggle of young children finds that most of all she has to deal with the rampant speculation that the small stripped cat visible on one of the last pages is in fact the tiger in disguise on its way to turn another household upside down.