Tuesday, June 8, 2010

71 - Christian, the Hugging Lion; Richardson, Parnell and Bates













Christian, the Hugging Lion; Justin Richardson; Peter Parnell and Amy Bates

I so loved reading the adult version of this book: A Lion Called Christian, Bourke and Rendall, that I was very curious to check out the book for children which was released in April 2010.

Richardson and Parnell, tell a heartwarming story of two men named Ace and John, who purchase a baby lion cub from Harrods in London. Together the three create a truly unique family. For one year, Christian live happily with his human family playing with toys and watching birds from the window of their tiny London apartment. He was happy to go for walks in the park with his owners, but soon Christian was no longer a tiny lion cub.....he grew and grew and grew; he even got too big for the sofa (his comfy bed at times).

Ace and John knew that Christian needed a better life; he needed to be in the wild with animals like himself. They made arrangements to transport Christian to Africa.  One year later Ace and John returned to Kenya to see if they could find Christian. The three were reunited, and amazingly, Christian recognized his former owners, and greeted them with a huge, emotional "lion sized hug".

MY THOUGHTS - Christian the Hugging Lion is a heart warming tale, which was based on a true story. The story was very cute and although the illustrations (by Amy Bates) were nice, they were not exceptional, and lacked in color appeal, in my opinion.

RATING - 4/5 Stars - Library Book

3 comments:

  1. I can kind of see from the cover what you must mean about the illustrations. But it does sound like a cute book!

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  2. I so loved the story of this lion and this one looks adorable!!

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  3. I never read the book, but I remember seeing the story on tv (maybe 60 Minutes?) and it totally made me cry!

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