The Tiger Who Came to Tea 🐯🍰☕️ by Judith Kerr Read Aloud

The doorbell rings just as Sophie and her mummy are sitting down to tea. Who could it possibly be? What they certainly don't expect to see at the door is a big furry, stripy tiger!
The Tiger Who Came to Tea is a short children's story, first published by HarperCollins in 1968, written and illustrated by Judith Kerr.[1] The book concerns a girl called Sophie, her mother, and an anthropomorphised tiger who invites himself to their afternoon tea and consumes all the food and drink they have. The book remains extremely popular[2] more than 50 years after it was first published, and a theatrical adaptation of the story has been produced. A television adaptation of the book aired on UK's Channel 4 on Christmas Eve 2019 at 7:30pm GMT.
Author Judith Kerr is famous for her children's books, but behind the sweetness of works such as The Tiger Who Came To Tea lies a past set against the horror of Nazi Germany.
"Once there was a little girl called Sophie, and she was having tea with her mummy in the kitchen. Suddenly there was a ring at the door. Sophie's mummy said, 'I wonder who that could be?'"
For many parents, the opening lines of The Tiger Who Came to Tea are very familiar.
The work, published in 1968, has been read by several generations and tells the story of a tiger who invites himself to tea and eats and drinks all the food and water in Sophie's house. He then leaves, never to return.
"It was just a bedtime story I made up for my daughter when she was two, getting on for three," says Kerr, who also wrote and illustrated the Mog series of picture books.
"I knew it by heart, every word. It hadn't changed because you watch your child's face and obviously you leave out bits gradually if they look bored.
"I told it to her again and again and again, and she used to say, 'Talk the tiger'."
Kerr, who turned 90 this year, loved visiting the zoo with her daughter Tacy, and particularly liked looking at the "beautiful" tigers.
"When I decided to do the book, I remember wondering what the tiger should look like, whether he should have clothes."
Kerr grew up in a loving family in pre-World War Two Berlin. Her mother Julia was a composer and her father, Alfred Kerr, a Jewish intellectual and theatre critic. They realised the impending threat from Hitler and Nazi Germany, and publicly criticised the regime.
The Tiger Who Came to Tea is not just a much-loved children’s book. For decades, it has provided a rich ground for literary critics to debate the symbolism of the charming, menacing and, above all, very hungry tiger.
Many have fixated on the invasion of the tiger into the family home as an allegory for life under the Nazis. Kerr’s family fled Germany in 1933 after her father, a prominent Jewish theatre critic, was placed on a Nazi death list. The experience gave rise to Kerr’s semi-autobiographical story When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit.
“Judith knows about dangerous people who come to your house and take people away,” argued children’s author Michael Rosen.