A lot of my most treasured books aren’t well known in this country and I can still hear the way my dad used to read them to me in his thick British accent. The Lion In the Meadow by Margaret Mahy is one of them and it’s so well written it gives me chills.
A little boy tells his mother there’s a lion in the meadow and she says, “Nonsense, little boy.” The mother gives him a matchbox with a supposed dragon in it and tells the boy to release the dragon in the meadow to frighten the lion. As it turns out, there is a dragon in the matchbox and the little boy and lion hide together from the dragon. The lion tells the boy that he should have left him alone because he just eats apples. So, the little boy tells his mother that now there’s a dragon in the meadow and the mother said she just made up a story about the dragon. The lion says, “Some stories are true and some aren’t.” And the last line of the story is “The mother never made up a story again.” Shivers. Such a great story. I wish I had written it. You can buy it on Amazon.
