A tiger cub's mother weaves him a pair of slippers to keep the stones and thorns out of his feet, and wearing them he works his way up: making bricks, then building houses, then a big house of his own with a garden and a fountain in it. He keeps the slippers on the whole way.

Then a guest asks why a man of his standing wears such raggedy shoes, and the tiger is embarrassed enough to try to get rid of them. The slippers keep coming back. That is the joke the story runs on, and it is a very old one: Jan Brett is retelling the Middle Eastern folk tale of Abu Kassem's Slippers, moved to India.

The ending is the part that earns its place on a child's shelf. The slippers reach the tiger's uncle, who weeps when he recognises the work of his sister's hands and sees what his nephew built while wearing them. The book is about not being ashamed of where you started.

Jan Brett draws it the way she draws everything, which is to say the borders are as busy as the page. Jewelled panels run down both edges of every spread with a second story going on inside them, and the palace garden is a green world of peacocks, marble fountains, caparisoned elephants and roses.

Hardcover, 32 pages, 9.56 by 11.88 in, written and illustrated by Jan Brett. G. P. Putnam's Sons Books for Young Readers, an imprint of Penguin Random House, 2019. ISBN-13 9780399170744. Publisher age guidance: 4 to 8 years.