Tiny Tiger Says Why Can’t I?

by Smriti Halls, illustrated by Steve Small

Interest age: 2 to 5

Published by Simon and Schuster, 2025

  • Picture books
  • Poetry and rhyme
  • Early Learning

About this book

Tiny Tiger is a bundle of wants. He really wants all the cake and the ice cream and he wants to live on the moon, drive the car, and wear pyjamas to school. And he can’t see why his parents keep saying NO to all of those brilliant and delicious things. Why can’t he do everything he wants? 

Yet one day, when Tiny Tiger climbs a huge slide, he gets to the top and realises that he actually doesn’t want to go down it: it’s too scary and high up there! 

Luckily, Mum and Dad are there to help him down. Tiny Tiger reflects that sometimes, maybe Mum and Dad do know best, after all, and resolves to do his best to be delightful, calm, and kind… most of the time. 

Smriti Halls is a genius at rhyming text in board books for toddlers and pre-schoolers, and her bouncy, perfectly pitched rhyme in Tiny Tiger Says Why Can’t I? is no exception. 

It’s a super fun book to read aloud with just the right level of interesting words – fluffy sock, cookie dough, trampoline – plus an adorable and relatable main character that young readers will empathise with deeply.  

This is also one of many books that Halls and illustrator Steve Small have made together, and the warm, characterful artwork is a perfect fit for a story about being brave enough to ask for help, and learning that there might be reasons why we don’t always get to do what we want to. 

About the author

Smriti Halls is an award-winning, critically acclaimed children's author, published in more than 30 languages worldwide. Her books include #1 bestseller I Love You Night and Day, I'm Sticking with You, Elephant in My Kitchen and The Little Island.

With a cast of characters as varied as mischievous monsters and disgruntled geese, she explores relationship and identity; the personal and the political; how it feels to be in your own skin - and in someone else's. Her books, often fast-paced and funny or lyrical and tender, are always full of heart and hope and speak to the child in all of us.

Smriti also creates bold board books to engage the very smallest readers, young fiction for newly independent readers and beautiful, highly illustrated non-fiction for older readers including the award-winning The Ways of the Wolf.

The Little Island is currently shortlisted for the 2020 Little Rebels Award and the 2020 Teach Primary Awards, while I'm Sticking With You was the Independent Bookshops Children's Book of the Month for August 2020. Her forthcoming picture book Rain Before Rainbows (illustrated by David Litchfield) has been made available ahead of publication in partnership with Save the Children as a free e-book to support their work with families most affected by the coronavirus pandemic.

Smriti works widely with children and adults in schools, libraries, festivals, bookshops and prisons to bring a love of reading and stories to the widest possible audience. She lives in London and is also published as Smriti Prasadam-Halls.

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