Little Lion Girl

Leonie and her mother board the city bound train for a day’s adventure. As she looks round the carriage she sees people whom she considers rather extraordinary and this makes her decide to follow suit. It’s a brave little lion girl who roars, leonine fashion as she sallies boldly forth determined to make the most of the city’s sights and sounds.

To her mother’s gentle urgings to take care and stay close to her, Leonie responds with reassurances that the city doesn’t scare a lion girl, a clever and amazing one at that. And when the two of them sit together refuelling on drinks and cakes, Leonie tells her mother how happy she is. Before long she’s off again looking for more adventures, stopping to scale a fountain and proclaim herself ‘King of this city.’

However, it transpires that our lion girl can be rather too adventurous, for having spied a butterfly, she forgets her mum’s wise words and suddenly finds herself in a very scary situation, sans her mother and sans her roar. Then above the sounds of her surroundings she hears a voice that lifts her spirits once more. Held tightly in her mother’s loving embrace, Leonie’s roar starts to return.

Told through Olivia Hope’s lyrical words and Fiona Woodcock’s wonderfully expressive, vibrant scenes that work brilliantly together, this roarsome, reassuring tale of the power of the imagination and of having a loving parent to return to who is willing to leave room for a child to explore.

Just as the city was for Leonie, this book is a delight for the ears and eyes.