While thinking about my literary influences for Wilderness for a class I’ve been asked to teach on the novel, I thought of Timothy Tiger, about which I was deeply passionate at 4. The influence on my work is clear:
Timothy was a dear little tidy tiger who did not have a mother. He lived all by himself in the Great Big Jungle. What he wanted most of all, was someone who could cuddle him and play with him and purr him to sleep every night. So one day Timothy set out in search of a mother…