Review: a fine children's book to "help your children find their inner peace and ability to deal with anger"
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 04 18, 2014
The Peaceful Lion and the Nagging Crow by Assaf Marcus is a very special book for toddlers and young children who will learn an important lesson from this tale—that you can control your feelings and that others around you can influence your feelings only if you let them. This is very important for young children to learn as they are growing and that’s grand. Moreover, grownups can happily bond with young kids as they read this book together and the vocabularies of small kids will be enhanced as they read this book and discover new words. I should add that the illustrations by Malgorzata Godziuk are absolutely wonderful, warm and very well done—they enhance the book incredibly!In this story there is a peaceful lion that seems quite happy and this bothers a crow “that liked to tease and annoy everyone.” Indeed, the crow is called “The Nagging Crow” because he is so remarkably obnoxious! One day the crow decides to “(try) to make the lion angry;” but to the crow’s own annoyance he cannot make the lion annoyed or angry in the slightest. The crow tries everything he can to make the lion upset, annoyed or angry—for a year the crow plays “loud music, (makes) silly faces and (makes) a lot of noise” but never once does the lion react with anger or even the slightest bit of annoyance. After the year is over the crow cannot understand why the lion never got angry or upset at all—and the lion teaches the crow the invaluable lesson that it’s just like receiving a gift—if he (the lion) doesn’t want to become angry the crow will feel angry and frustrated and not the lion—thus the crow and the reader learn that you “(can) choose not to become angry and mad when things bother (you)…(you) can choose to be happy or (you) can choose to be angry.”Of course there’s a little bit more to the story than this but I’ll stop here to avoid spoiling it all for you. Suffice it to say that toddlers and little kids will be enchanted by this very well written book with its fine illustrations and they will learn a valuable lesson about feelings and how you can choose to control your feelings and not let others bother you just because they want to bother you.Great job, Assaf and Malgorzata! Please, keep these wonderful children’s books coming—I only wish that I had such wonderful children’s books when I was a kid!