Customer Reviews

The Lion Who Wanted to Love

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Fantastic book for 2-5 year olds. Great rythm and vocabulary. The artwork is well suited for children. Still one of my favorite books for bedtime.

My five year old as well as the other five girls in her Daisy Troop loved this book. I found it fun and easy to read aloud and used it to discuss love,cooperation,teamwork and helping.

This is a really sweet book. Leo doesn't want to hunt his prey, he wants to be their friends. As he is outcast from his pride, he stays true to his inner self. He makes many friends along the way! This book really encourages not always going with the flow and being a true friend and peace maker. His pride comes around to seeing that he truly is a king. Great little story for instilling sweet values and confidence in young ones.

First we borrowed this book, a Chinese language version, from school library. The illustration is pretty good and full of the animals children will like. My 3-year-old son often picked it from several other books and asked me to read with him. Since it is a Chinese translation, the sentences do not rhyme (I learned this from the reviews written by other amazon readers). Therefore I ordered the English version which I find is a lot better. We like this book and I think we don't need to be critical about the story itself.

I am a big fan of Giles' books. We have most of them! Our favorites.. Giraffes Can't Dance and Rumble in the Jungle. But this one did not meet our expectations. First of all, the mother sends Leo away! What mother would ever send her child away? It doesn't make sense. Also, I don't like all of the references to death. And "biting through the skin" of the zebra. It's definitely not good for young children.

This story shows the value of helping and respecting others, especially when they are different. You never know when you are going to need them for help.

You know, I really want to be able to endorse this book. The illustrations, quite colorful and appealing, though infantile and lacking detail, are pretty cute--especially the young cheetah in distress--and they carry the book, coupled with the fact that the story is told in rhyme. You just can't beat a rhyming book with good meter! I just draw the line where a seemingly possible story strays into the realm of impossibility. What does a young vegetarian lion eat? This point is not addressed. I categorize this book with ones like "The Rainbow Fish", in which authors seem to try to brainwash our children into accepting some sort of utopian ideal of living in harmony with the universe. The problem with this idea is that it simply does not work in practice. It's a nice goal toward which to strive, but the nasty reality is that in today's world, it's the fastest, strongest, and meanest lion who gets to be king of the pride.