"Trapped am I, in cage of twisty wire, cold concrete. Prowl Rage Howl. Know you not that I am tooth and claw-see me hunt through bracken and bush, see me swagger across wild lands, see me glory at the edge of a cliff." A powerful book about captivity and extinction blends a spare, stream-of-conscious-like narrative imagining the voice of the last known thylacine, which died in captivity in the late 1930s, with two visual narratives. One is lush, full-page spreads of the thylacine in the wild as it dreams of its former life as part of the natural world. The other is an unsettling series of black-and-white photographic images blending blurred stills of the animal in captivity taken from a BBC documentary in 1937 with wood walls and wire fencing. A brief note provides more information on this carnivorous marsupial, also known as the Tasmanian Tiger, that is now believed to be extinct. (Age 9 and older)

Arresting and beautiful, this picture book is a shimmering encounter with the Tasmanian tiger, a lament for a lost species, and a compelling evocation of the place of animals in nature

Celebrating the Australian landscape, this book interposes arresting text, images of the last known thylacine in a concrete cage, and sweeping color paintings of the animal in its natural environment. Two picture book masters use sparse text and powerful images to confront environmental issues, in a unique, heartbreaking way. Intense, poetic, and beautiful, it will haunt readers.