Tiger's Illustrated Dictionary

As picture dictionaries go this one has a certain appeal. As we go through the alphabet, each double page spread features a particular setting or topic – Airport, Insects, Kiosk, Ocean, and Sports, for example. A large illustration on one side shows a young tiger in that setting and on the opposite page we have a grid of smaller illustrations of words associated with it.

The tiger cub provides a running link throughout the book as he appears as a character in each of the larger illustrations – buying fruit in the fruit shop, roller skating in the park etc. A couple of the pages leave me uneasy – the Circus page shows Tiger applauding a performing elephant; at the Zoo, he stands smiling at a tiger in a cage. Circuses and zoos have changed and I feel this should be reflected. There is an old-fashioned look to some of the illustrations – I’m not sure if this is deliberate or not but I can’t help feeling that the human characters should look more of our time.

However, the smaller illustrations, of wildlife in particular, are very well drawn; the layout of these right hand pages is clear and visually pleasing with the words printed on a white background under the pictures. It is a pity that (presumably for cost reasons) the dual language English/Somali version uses the same typeface for both languages. Given that both languages use roman script, a distinction in font would be a good idea. All in all, though I feel there is room for improvement here, I do think this is a book children would enjoy looking at. (English only edition, ‎978-0948137082.)