Children’s Hour: The Lion Inside

Children’s Hour is a  feature here at Lucybird’s Book Blog every Thursday where I’m looking at children’s picture books. As I work in a nursery I get plenty of opportunities to look at picture books, and to see what the kids think of them so it really makes sense to use those experiences.

I’d love to hear everybody’s experiences of the books I review too, and feel free to post me a link to your own reviews, I’d love to make this a bit interactive.

I bought The Lion Inside for the kids when I got a new copy of Bear Hunt for our workshop, because it was on the same offer. At the moment we have a group of kids who re really rowdy, and some of them find storytime/carpet time really difficult to sit through and listen during, so I was looking for a book which would engage them (because I know they can be engaged). The Lion Inside did a pretty good job; if anything too good a job because rather than jumping up to mess around or turning and poking their friends they were jumping up to look at the pictures or ask questions (which is a good reason to jump up, just makes it difficult for the other kids).

The story is about a mouse who wants to make friends and be noticed, but is too small and too quiet, so she decides to ask the loud, popular, lion to . teach her how to roar. It’s a nice story about friendship, and being brave, and about judging others. I was hoping it would teach that you don’t have to be loud to be noticed- I’m not sure that quite got through though!

The pictures are beautiful, I especially like the image below, where the lion looks big and scary- although you soon find that he is not what you expect!

source

There was one line in the book which almost stopped me from buying it “If you want to change, you first have to change you”, it sort of suggests that you should change for others, although it’s later shown not to be true. I’m not sure the kids got this subtlety, although one asked about the line so I could explain it anyway!

Buy it:

Paperback (£3.85)

Kindle (£3.99)