The Butterfly Lion

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Bertie escapes from his school and meets Millie, and the two become fast friends, flying kites together. He tells Millie all about his life in South Africa, and his white lion cub. When the pair leave school, they continue to write until war breaks out, and a letter arrives from Bertie informing Millie that he has joined the army. The Butterfly Lion is a heart warming yet bitter-sweet story. Bertie is a lonely little boy in South Africa who one day adopts an orphaned white lion cub, who then becomes his best friend. Basher Beaumont terrorises and torments the boy at boarding school. Discuss bullying and how we can help people who are affected. A young boy named Michael runs away from a boarding school and meets an old lady living in a big cottage. She tells him about a boy named Bertie who lived in South Africa. As a boy, Bertie had found an orphaned white lion cub, but was eventually forced to send the lion away to the circus and leave South Africa to attend boarding school in Wiltshire, England. Eventually, Bertie had to return to England to attend a boarding school, and the lion - not deemed fit to survive in the wild on its own - was sold to a circus.

The Butterfly Lion transports the reader/listener to two very different continents and several different stages in time. It takes you on a rich journey of adventure,loneliness,loss,sadness,hope,love,friendship,determination and joy.This, in and of itself, would be heartbreaking and infuriating. But knowing how much the two cared about one another just made it worse (or better, from a storyteller's point of view). Michael Morpurgo appeared on the map for me after I first saw the movie and then read the book War Horse. Eventually, I came across this gem of an edition. The protagonist of the story is a young boy who is well characterised by Morpurgo allowing the reader to get on board and feel the emotions of the character. However, he is carefully ambiguous enough to allow a wide verity of readers to identify directly with him. Make a list of the animals named in the book. What can you find out about them? Can you identify what they eat, their habitats, how they are adapted to live there etc? The Born Free Foundation is an international wildlife charity. Can you find out more about the work that it does? Could you plan and carry out some fundraising activities to support it?

The tale follows the young boy who meets a number of people, the most important of which is an old lady who tells the boy a story of her (and her husbands) life, this is where the lion also comes in to it.Later, when fighting in France in the First World War, he saves two men's lives and is given a Victoria Cross. Millie, who has become a nurse in the hopes of finding Bertie, reads about him in a newspaper and the two are reunited. Together they discover that Monsieur Merlot's circus has closed down, but that the Frenchman lives nearby with the lion. Bertie wanted to run away from his boarding school in Wiltshire to London. On a map can you find Wiltshire? London? While I wouldn't say this is an exciting book is covers a lot of exciting issues and keeps readers with a variety of interest hooked.