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Press, 4 December 1979, Page 5 (Supplement)

A delightful new children’s book has been published recently by the well-known British writer, Russell Hoban. The Dancing Tigers, illustrated by David Gentleman, displays all the charm and magic which children (and adults) have loved in his previous work — the Frances series and the Brute Family books, among others. in this new addition to the Hoban library a “switched-on” Rajah whose elephant is fitted with a telephone and a stereo tape cassette player, sets off into the jungle to hunt tigers. The tigers, under'• ndably, are upset that the Rajah is coming to kill them and devise a clever plan to save themselves. The message of the book is one of conservation, of the natural order of things and man’s unwelcome interference. There is a touch of realism woven into the dream-like story — in contrast to the trendy Rajah, “the tigers had no stereo tape cassette players and no telephones. They didn’t wear shoes, they were primitive. They had no guns, whenever they killed anything they got all bloody.” It is this mixture of practicality and pure fantasy which has made Hoban so -popular with children. The Dancing Tigers will be as eagerly sought bv them as any of his previous best-sellers.