Stripes the Tiger

In a story originally published in Canada and translated from the French, the team behind Superfab Saves the Day introduces Stripes, a yellow tabby cat who longs to be a tiger. Stripes may be small, but he can still cause plenty of damage, shredding his owner's sofa and ignoring a cluster of volleyball-playing mice in favor of "larger prey": Delaporte shows a white dog with fierce claw marks on his rear end holding the tiny but ferocious Stripes at arm's length (the dog looks somewhat embarrassed for the both of them). Eventually, Stripes's fed-up owner takes him to the zoo "to see a real tiger," and it's an eye-opening trip: the two cats wind up swapping places so that Stripes can spend his days "eating raw meat in front of frightened children" and the tiger can fulfill its "ultimate dream-life" of napping on the sofa. Delaporte brings Stripes's jungle cat fantasy to vivid life in mixed-media illustrations, using red crayonlike scribbles to emphasize the cat's predatory rage and his owner's growing frustration. It's a mischievously fun story that that lets everyone win without being forced to change. Ages 4%E2%80%938. (Sept.)