Overview

Growing up at the foot of Mount Everest, a Sherpa boy named Tenzing Norgay dreamed about one day being the first to climb the giant in his backyard. For years he practiced, carrying loads of rocks in his backpack to grow stronger, prowling the mountain's lower levels; later, carrying loads of equipment for other adventurers, but always, always, wanting to climb himself.

But his dream never seemed possible until he met Edmund Hillary, a New Zealand beekeeper who shared Tenzing's dream. By working together every step of the way, two men from entirely different backgrounds climbed into the clouds, to the peak of Mount Everest. However, as the years passed, only Hilary's name lived on in the history books while, in the west, Norgay's was mostly forgotten.

In Tiger of the Snows, Robert Burleigh introduces young readers to one of the Far East's greatest heroes and tells the long-neglected story of a litle boy with an unimaginable dream, who refused to be daunted by the world's most daunting mountain, and who came to be known as the tiger of the snows. Caldecott winner Ed Young brings Everest to life with hauntingly, subtly beautiful animal imageries and resplendent colors, capturing the breathtaking grandeur and life force of the mountain the Nepalese call Mother Goddess of the Earth.

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A gorgeously illustrated praise-song illuminates the yearnings and achievement of Tenzing Norgay, recently recovered from history as the Nepalese Sherpa who, along with Sir Edmund Hillary, conquered Mount Everest in 1953. Burleigh's present-tense free-verse poem strings epithets together in Homeric fashion: Tenzing Norgay, / Sherpa, / Mountain man, / Tiger of the snows . . . The effect is intense, the epithets giving way to clipped phrases that kaleidoscopically evoke the effort of climbing. The white-on-black text appears in appropriately vertical panels that frame Young's spectacular pastels, his fuzzy lines alternately mimicking blowing snow or the parka-clad forms of the climbers themselves. The book's landscape orientation gives breadth to the paintings, allowing a long-shot view of Everest, its bulk dwarfing the tiny smudged dots of a line of climbers in the foreground. A pre-dawn image of the last morning of the ascent places readers in a close-up behind Tenzing's goggles, looking into Hillary's uncannily lit face. The favor is returned at the top of the world, as Tenzing's smiling face gazes into Hillary's camera, the Himalayas spreading out in the background. A striking, inspiring tribute. (afterword) (Picture book/poetry. 7-10) (Kirkus Reviews)

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