“Dear Aya Anbessa,

I am deeply sorry that I let you down. I was vigilant for two days and two nights but made a mistake at the end of the third day. I sat down for a moment to observe the young moon but somehow drifted off. Please accept my most sincere apologies. I look forward to your forgiveness and to your kind reply.

Your friend,
The Gibbon”

The Lion and the Gibbon is set in Ethiopia and is a story about friendship, courage and quick thinking.

The lion and gibbon are good friends, until one day the lion’s worst enemy, the hyena, turns everything upside down. The two friends become foes and as the story progresses they become sadder and sadder. A young simien fox sees how sad the lion and gibbon have become so goes to seek help from the baboon with the bleeding heart.

Can the baboon help before tragedy strikes? Will the friends work out their differences?

My Little Miss Four and I enjoyed reading this book together, and it’s a book that she quite often selects to be her bedtime story.

There are some important messages in the book about friendship and what it means to be a good friend. The book lends itself to some great discussions that you can have with your class. The book also talks about courage and quick thinking and how not just muscle and brawn can help in a tricky situation.

The book features illustrations of some of Ethiopia’s landscape that are rustic, beautiful and colorful.

I think this book would be ideal for junior primary students K-3.

Book details

Author: Atakelty Hailu

Illustrator: Helena Janecic

ISBN: 9780992595005 (paperback)

Format: comes in a variety of options including paperback, hardback and ebook (42 pages).

Publisher: CreateSpace

Suitable for: primary school age

RRP: $8.99 (ebook), $18.19 (paperback), $25.46 (hardback) AUD

Buy the book

The book is available to purchase from CreateSpace or Book Depository, which has free worldwide delivery. You can pick up the eBook from the iTunes store.

Free accordion book review template

We also decided it would be fun to work on a little activity after we had read the book. I’ve made up some accordion book templates, which can be used with any book that includes animals as the main characters. Your students include facts and information about the story they have read. They color the template, cut it out and fold on the dashed lines to make it into an accordion book.

In the freebie there are 3 different templates for the animals: lion, fox and monkey (I couldn’t find a picture of a gibbon :-)) I have also included two versions of each book for the AUS-UK and USA spelling. Scroll down to the last picture for the link and to find out about a giveaway for the book.

Click on the picture below to download your set of the book review templates.

Giveaway

The author of the book has kindly donated some promotion codes so that you can download the ebook (from the Apple iBook Store) for free. To enter, answer the below question in the comments:

Where does the Blue Nile originate?

The giveaway closes at 6pm on Monday 2 March (WST). I will randomly select 5 winners who I will email with the promotion codes.

Good luck!