Ravi's Roar; Tom Percival

Ravi’s Roar is the third book in the ‘Big Bright Feelings’ collection by author and illustrator Tom Percival. The previous releases, Ruby’s Worry and Perfectly Norman, are both great reads and Ravi’s Roar is equally as good.

Being the youngest and smallest of four children in his family Ravi often misses out on things. He comes last in family races, has to sit by the dog on the train, is too small to play on the adventure playground and the big slide and there’s no ice cream left for the littlest person. Things are not going well. In fact they are going so badly, Ravi turns into a tiger and lets out one huge…ROAR!!!

Being a tiger is great as everyone lets you do whatever you want, I mean who’s going to stop a tiger. But Ravi learns that life is no fun when everyone is scared of you and learns to control his roar and turns it into more of a growl.

Ravi’s Roar is a great book for helping children understand and manage the emotion of anger. I find it really difficult to get angry. Or perhaps that should be, I find it really difficult to express my feelings when I am angry and all the emotion stays bottled up inside. I really could have done with Ravi’s Roar when I was younger.

Percival is an excellent illustrator and the use of the colour red to convey Ravi’s emotion against the stark black and white background really show how overwhelming and all-consuming one emotion can be. The clever use of bold, italics and different font sizes has specific words jumping off the page and add to the story-telling, particularly when used as a read-a-loud.

If you see me turning into a tiger as I walk down the street that’s just the tiger in me letting the anger out. The next title in the ‘Big Bright Feelings’ series is 'Meesha Makes Friends’ and is due for release on 9th July 2020.

Recommended for 5+.