Little Lion

One day, Dad comes home with a lion. “Brought you a dog,” says Dad. Mum and the children don't believe him, but they call it Dog, let it sleep in the dog basket, and keep quiet about their strange, noisy pet. But Big Jonno, the school bully, is curious, and tries to make life tough, until one day, the worst thing happens — the Lion escapes and finds Big Jonno.

This delightfully surreal story by a multi-award-winning author and talented illustrator — in which a bully gets his just deserts — will keep young readers guessing all the way through!

The inspiration for this story came from the Bleek-Lloyd collection of stories written down by the linguists Wilhelm Bleek, his daughter Jemima and his sister-in-law Lucy Lloyd when they were recording the language and stories of the |Xam* people of the Northern Cape in South Africa.
The original story doesn’t have a middle or an end, but it has a very funny beginning when a man brings a lion home and tells his wife it’s a dog.
* The | represents a ‘click’ sound.