The Story of King Lion Hardcover – Picture Book, March 15, 2013

Beautifully written with lovely illustrations on the magic of the seasons. My daughter loves all of these books.

I have all the Elsa Beskow books and Sibylle Von Olfers books in my collection so when I received this new release of the 1912 classic, I was thrilled. The illustrations in the classic art nouveau style of each animal character are so beautiful. The story told in rhyme, involves a challenge/contest from King Lion for all the animals in the kingdom to bring what food they think King Lion would like best. Our favorites are the Hedgehog bringing snail sausages, the stork with his frog pate, and the donkey with his thistle salad. Spoiler alert: the only issue one may have is that the cunning wolf brings a plain lamb to the lion's feet much to the lion's delight(he just lies limp as if hes asleep). My 5-year-old loved this book; We have had it one day and she has asked to read it a dozen times already. She loves to try and test her memory by trying to guess which animal brought what food. Another nice early-reader feature is that the illustrations of the animals are all labeled with their name "MOLE", "FOX" ect...my daughter reads the name of the animal and I read the poem.

Such beautiful illustrations.

I really love Sibylle Von Olfers books. They are magical and delightful for young children. I bought this one and didn't think to read it before reading it to my young daughter. It is a lovely story, beautifully illustrated, but an intense ending for a young child. The kingdom's animals are trying to find a perfect meal for the King Lion and in the end the wolf brings the King Lion a lamb to eat. This pleases the king and then the wolf is allowed to rule side by side with the Lion King. The wolf looks "scary" and my child was dismayed about the lamb... "What? they're going to eat the lamb?" Be prepared for a lot of explaining...

In the end it shows lion and wolf with a killed lamb. Yuck. Vulgar. Traumatizing for sweet 4yo girl. Not for us. It's about the food chain, but no thank you.

A lovey children story for bedtime reading. I bought it for a 4 year old girl for her birthday. She loves hearing it over and over, her parents read it to her at bedtime.