Wild Lion and the Mice: A Fable about Kindness

Abstract

This is a square 16-page pamphlet 5½ on a side. The colored cover has a lion looking down positively on two mice who are running away from him. The title-page reproduces the same illustration in black-and-white. From there on the booklet's illustrations are either black-and-white or duochrome: black and orange. In this version it is a mother mouse and her child that run by the sleeping lion. Illustrations from the story itself are interspersed with those of a Black storyteller narrating to a small audience of Black children. The timing here has the lion release the mice during the day, get caught at night, and experience help in the morning from the two mice. These two seem to come by by chance. Perhaps the best illustration in the booklet is the two-page illustration of the mice freeing the lion (12-13). The moral is a bit surprising: No one is too big or too little to be kind!