When You Trap a Tiger

I got When You Trap a Tiger by Tae Keller from the library after seeing it won the Newbery medal this year. I'm getting lazy with writing my own summaries, so here's the description from Amazon: "When Lily and her family move in with her sick grandmother, a magical tiger straight out of her halmoni's Korean folktales arrives, prompting Lily to unravel a secret family history. Long, long ago, Halmoni stole something from the tigers. Now they want it back. And when one of the tigers approaches Lily with a deal--return what her grandmother stole in exchange for Halmoni's health--Lily is tempted to agree. But deals with tigers are never what they seem! With the help of her sister and her new friend Ricky, Lily must find her voice...and the courage to face a tiger."

This was a great read. I was sobbing by the end and was also left with a lot of questions about what was real and what wasn't--which maybe was left unclear on purpose. I loved the main character, Lily, and worried about what was going to happen as she tried to navigate the cirumstances she was facing. It was a unique book, but it definitely caught my interest and made me want to keep reading. It was also kind of deep at the end, and I probably need to do some pondering to really understand all of the lessons the book teaches in the end.

Rating: * * * (3/3 = Loved it)