The Butterfly Lion

The Butterfly Lion by Michael Morpurgo is a lovely little story of 90 pages. It can be read in a sitting and would be an excellent read-aloud. There are actually two stories present. The framing story is written in the first-person as if by Morpurgo when he was a young, runaway schoolboy. It's a ghost story. The second story is the tale told to him by a lonely old woman. It is the tale of another runaway schoolboy and his White Lion, The White Prince, The Butterfly Lion, all one and the same.

Something out through the window had caught my eye. The lion on the hillside was still there, but now he was blue and shimmering in the sunlight. It was as if he were breathing, as if he were alive. It wasn't a shadow any more. No shadow is blue. "No, you're not seeing things," the old lady whispered. "It's not magic. He's real enough. He's our lion, Bertie's and mine. He's our butterfly lion."

For me, this is one of the more memorable 2000 Caudill Nominees. It is both magical and ghostly. It is fantastical - definitely unbelievable. But, boy do you want to believe! If you love animals. If you are fascinated with the animals of Africa, you will most certainly enjoy this book. It is both sad and joyous. Guaranteed smiles and maybe some tears. The language is as beautiful as the settings described.

I'd also like to share the author's foreward:

"The Butterfly Lion grew from several magical roots: the memories of a small boy who tried to runaway from school a long time ago; a book about a pride of white lions discovered by Chris McBride; a chance meeting in a lift with Virginia McKenna, actress and champion of lions and all creatures born free; the true story of a soldier of the First World War who rescued some circus animals in France from certain death; and the sighting from a train of a white horse carved out on a chalky hillside near Westbury in Wiltshire, England."

You still need to know what it is about? A young boy, Bertie, is born and raised in South Africa on a wildlife preserve. He wants nothing more than to see the wild animals up close for himself, but his father wants him safe in their home's enclosure. Bertie decides to hide up in a tree one day to watch the preserve's water hole and is rewarded with a glimpse of a lioness and her cub who happens to be a ghostly white. His parents don't believe him and Bertie begins to think it is a dream when they don't return to the water hole.

Then comes the awful day when Bertie finds out that his father has killed the lioness to protect his cattle. Not long after, Bertie and his mother save the white lion cub from a cackle of hyenas and they stand up together in opposition to Bertie's father so that they can keep the white lion. The white lion is allowed to live with the family in their house. This means that the lion never learns to live in the wild and hunt for itself.

Eventually, Bertie's father decides to send him away to England to boarding school. The lion, who continues to grow in size, will be sold to a French circus. Bertie is both angry and heartbroken and vows to find the lion again someday. He just never could have realized how long he would have to wait or where he would end up finding the lion again.

Check this book out to discover how the White Lion becomes the Butterfly Lion.