Lion Boy III - The Launch Party

The launch party for Lion Boy by Zizou Corder was held at the Puffin offices in The Strand on Wednesday 8th October.

In a period when most promotional energies seem to be going into books for older readers, it is good to see a genuine children's book, aimed at 7-11 year olds, receiving celebrity treatment.

Lion Boy is a compelling adventure featuring circus acts and the main character's ability to speak to cats.

It has to be said though that the book starts poorly. The opening sentence repeats the word 'up' in a manner which is both verbally and typographically discordant. A stretch of dialogue on p29 is so clumsily written (a Y6 child could improve it in a trice), I almost stopped reading there and then. But the mother-daughter concoction does have narrative drive and stylistically the book improves as it is carried along by the adventure which, this being a trilogy, ends dangling the reader in the air.