Two Friends and Lion
A recent publishing trend has seen the release of numerous books inspired by websites like PostSecret and Passive Aggressive Notes. I thought I had spotted an even newer genre–books based on wildly popular YouTube videos–when I ran across A Lion Called Christian: The True Story of the Remarkable Bond between Two Friends and Lion.
The remarkable video has been passed around the Inter-web-nets a few hundred million times by now, and it has inevitably spawned a legion of occasionally disturbing parodies. Even for someone like me who disdains just about anything to which the term “feel-good” can be applied, Christian the Lion’s story definitely has the power to make the room seem unusually dusty.
The book was originally published in 1971, and it tells the tale of two friends who bought a lion cub from Harrod’s and raised him themselves for a year in Austin Powers-ish “Swinging London.” When the lion grew to an imposing 185 pounds and could no longer fit in the back of a jaunty convertible, the friends brought him to renowned conservationist George Adamson in Kenya, where he was released into the wild.
An updated version of the book published this year features 50 photographs and re-tells the (OK, I’ll say it) feel-good story of the friends’ unlikely reunion with the grown lion. A children’s version of the book is also available, and this Today show story from last year catches up with the two friends forty years later.
For research purposes I decided to re-watch the YouTube video after checking out the book, and . . . dang it . . . can’t quite see the keyboard . . . too dusty in here to type . . . .
*Sniffle*
