If you go down to pick books today (Library Lion - Michelle Knudsen)

Member Name: elkiedee

Product:	Library Lion - Michelle Knudsen
Date:	08/07/09 (8 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Fun and quirky story, library setting, enjoyable to read aloud

Disadvantages: None

This quirky children's picture book, with words by Michelle Knudsen and pictures by Kevin Hawkes, is a delightful story about a very keen library user.

A lion walks into the library one day, stays for the children's story session and starts to return every day. He becomes a volunteer helping out Miss Merriweather, the head librarian, and the lovely illustrations show him dusting the library books with his tail and letting small children stand on his back to reach high shelves and snuggle up to him to listen to stories.

This is quite an old fashioned library though and it has rules, which include being quiet, no running and no roaring allowed. Mr McBee is another librarian who thinks lions do not really belong in the library. The lion has been told what the rules are and as a good lion he normally sticks to them. One day though, Miss Merriweather has an accident at work and the lion roars trying to attract Mr McBee's attention to get help for her. Mr McBee tells him off and he disappears. Staff and children at the library are really sad not having him around, and Mr McBee has to go and find him and explain to him that the library has a new rule - "No roaring allowed, unless you have a very good reason" (such as helping a hurt friend). All ends happily. I think it's a lovely story.

I quite like the story's message as well, which is that rules are useful but there are times when they may need to be broken, or challenged or adapted.

I bought this book for us to read to my older son last year when he was less than a year old - he seemed to enjoy having a bedtime story read to him but at that point we could and did choose to read stories which were enjoyable for us. The bookshop I found it in had put on display next to The Tiger Who Came to Tea (a cunning and successful sales strategy for me).

There is quite a bit of text and it would probably appeal to 3 or 4 year olds who like libraries and enjoy the idea of a lion visiting them. I think it would stand up reasonably well to being read repeatedly, but I will come back to revise this review and let you know whether this is the case if my son takes to it as a favourite now that he can choose the stories he likes best (his dad sometimes ends up reading the same story 3 or 4 times, or more, in a day).

The story is about quite an old-fashioned library which looks very different in Kevin Hawkes' illustrations from those your children will be used to visiting - a really big, grand old building of a kind I have seen visiting the US but not in most English public libraries. The lion sniffs the card catalogue - it has been a few years since I saw one of these - although I was surprised to find computers shown in the pictures and mentioned in the text too, as I really thought I was reading about a library from some years ago. In fact it was first published in 2006 and came out in Britain in 2008.

I want a library lion in my local branch.

I enjoyed this book and hope that my 2 year old son and his baby brother will too.

The cover price of the book is £5.99. Amazon is currently selling it for £4.49.

Summary: A charming story about a keen library user and about rules