Friday, 25 November 2016

How To Hide A Lion At School by Helen Stephens (Children's, Picture book, 10E/10E, short 'n' sweet review)

September 2016, Scholastic, 32 pages, Paperback, Review copy 

Summary from Scholastic
Going to school? Aren’t you lucky! This handsome lion also wants to come. Snacks, sports, playtimes: who’d want to miss all this fun? Sadly, there’s one BIG problem. Lions aren’t allowed in school. Every day, Iris has to leave her furry friend behind. But now Iris is going on a school trip to the museum. Who says lions can’t go on school trips? No one! Now it’s up to our friendly lion to prove how good he is at hiding. After all, he doesn’t want to scare the museum guests…

Nayu's thoughts
The short answer is you don't! Iris is so cool to have a whole lion to herself. He clearly loves her and doesn't want to be apart, but understandably her teacher says no to it attending class with her. I love how inventive he gets in hiding at the museum-I imagined spy music playing in the scene when he was outside the museum, sneaking closer to the entrance as the children went in. Iris is equally clever in her genius way of making sure her teacher definitely didn't see him, which would have worked if the lion wasn't so kind and helped out someone using his disguise. 

I felt so sorry for him and Iris when he got sent away, but thankfully he saved the day! I like what happened in order for him to save the day, because it gently introduces younger readers occasional dangers on the road which could happen to them but usually has a happy ending, unfortunately not with a lion! It must have been a ginormous lion to do what it did at the end, as Iris has a lot of classmates. I haven't read any of Helen's books before but this is a definite reread! 

 Find out more on Helen's website.

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