My Four Lions. By Bernice Gold. Illustrated by Joanne Stanbridge. Toronto: Annick Press, 1999.
My Four Lions celebrates the power of the imagination to sustain us through the challenges of every day. On the title page, a boy prepares to leave his classroom, his backpack on his back, and a beautiful picture of a lion that he has drawn half-rolled in his hand. Across the copyright page and the page of acknowledgements, he trudges through snowy streets in the blue light of early dusk. As he walks through the darkening streets, up the stairs and down the halls of his apartment building on the left-hand pages, we see into the world of his imagination on the right-hand pages. For while in fact he walks bundled in the cold thin light of winter, in his mind—and in the words of the story—he walks through summery woods to his camp to meet with his friends, four lions who guard his campfire. As he enters the empty apartment, we see him take down from a shelf the box containing the four paper lions who guard him in his mother’s absence. He feeds them and tells them stories, “to make them stay brave.” And on his mother’s smiling return home, pizza in hand, he shows her the picture he has drawn at school, while the lions of his imagination smile benevolently upon them from his bedroom: “And I know when I sleep they will guard me till morning.” The respect for the courage of children is palpable here. This is a wonderful story.