A Lion in Paris

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From School Library Journal K-Gr 2—A lion, unhappy with his life, sets off to find "a job, love, and a future." He arrives at a Paris train station, expecting to be met with fear and even violence, but instead he is virtually ignored: "More than anything, the lion liked to be noticed." After some existential sadness in the rain, he starts to enjoy the sights of the city. Finally, he discovers an empty plinth at a crossroads, climbs up on it, and decides to stay there and become a Parisian landmark. There are only one or two short sentences per page, and there is little continuity from one spread to the next, making the story seem disjointed. The mixed-media illustrations include photographs, detailed drawings, and loosely sketched figures that play with scale to create a surreal world with a beige and orange color scheme. Perspective is flattened, causing objects to appear piled on top of one another. The pages are meant to be turned upward like a wall calendar, making it best for one-on-one reading, especially because of the large trim size. This story about finding where you are appreciated in the world will be more at home on coffee tables and in museum gift shops than at bedtime.—Anna Haase Krueger, Ramsey County Library, MN Read more From Booklist A big, orange lion is lonely in his grasslands home and galumphs off to Paris. What follows is a distinctively gorgeous tour around various Parisian locations, visualized in titanic, panoramic visuals that capture an artistic sense of the city’s spectacle. Each full-spread illustration occupies an oversize horizontal page and features the lion traipsing about the city and participating in some typical Parisian activities: getting a mysterious smile from the Mona Lisa, staring awestruck at the gleaming Centre Georges Pompidou, or trembling in wonder at the top of the Eiffel Tower. The lion himself looks to be a less moody version of one of Maurice Sendak’s Wild Things, while the exactingly imagined Paris he wanders through and its streaming denizens are idiosyncratically illustrated in a quirky, playful collage composed of stylized colored-pencil drawings and cutout photos. As the lion journeys from being a stranger in a strange land to a very part of the city itself—the lion statue at the Place Denfert-Rochereau—Alemagna’s charming tale manages paradoxically to be both strange and inviting all at once. Preschool-Grade 2. --Jesse Karp Read more See all Editorial Reviews