Little lamb Nathaniel is lost. He remembers wanting to play, and perhaps running away from something, but he\u2019s not sure how he ended up in a scary castle with his wool such a dirty mess. Things get much worse, though, when a dragon shows up. It threateningly tells Nathaniel that there\u2019s nowhere to hide, and soon looms over the poor little creature. Just when all seems lost, a lion appears through the mist, and Nathaniel isn\u2019t sure who\u2019s more dangerous. Just as the dragon moves to attack, \u201cThe lion bravely pounced, and He scratched the beast\u2019s eye. \/ Then the feisty dragon fell back with a \u2018ROAR\u2019 and a cry!\u201d The battle is on, with the lion fighting to protect Nathaniel from the dragon\u2019s flames. Though the reptilian beast bloodies his adversary\u2019s paw in battle, it\u2019s with that same paw that the lion marks Nathaniel as his own, forcing the dragon to give up. Finally, with the danger gone, the lion asks Nathaniel to follow him to freedom. Drawing on older Christian allegories, such as John Bunyan\u2019s The Pilgrim\u2019s Progress\u00a0as well as C.S. Lewis\u2019 The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Hyslop uses the trappings of fantasy to retell the story of a savior who defends lost sheep through his own sacrifice. For readers already familiar with the story of Jesus, the parallels will be evident; others may find that the story doesn\u2019t stand entirely on its own as a fantasy tale. In any case, Hyslop\u2019s endnotes lay out his intended, direct correlations to Scripture. His rhymes are consistent throughout and mostly flow naturally. Jasinski\u2019s painterly, full-color illustrations lend action and urgency to the tale, especially in showing the villainous dragon with a mouth that seems to drip lava. The depiction of the bloody paw mark on Nathaniel\u2019s back may be off-putting to some young readers, but it reinforces the poetic imagery.\u00a0<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Little lamb Nathaniel is lost. He remembers wanting to play, and perhaps running away from something, but he\u2019s not sure how he ended up in a scary castle with his wool such a dirty mess. Things get much worse, though, when a dragon shows up. It threateningly tells Nathaniel that there\u2019s nowhere to hide, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":251,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-250","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=250"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/251"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=250"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=250"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=250"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}