Following on from anti-bullying week last week, this week we are all completing a whole school writing challenge using Ed Vere’s, How To Be A Lion as inspiration. Leonard is a kind, thoughtful and poetic lion whose best friend, Marianne, is a duck. All the fierce lions believe that by now, Leonard should have chomped Marianne and their cruel words have hurt Leonard’s kind, kind heart.

Our challenge is to write a letter of advice to Leonard using all of our learning from anti-bullying week to persuade him that he should stay true to himself and that there are many ways to be a lion, not just one.

During our whole school assembly to introduce this task, our children showed huge empathy towards Leonard and were keen to ‘make a noise’ about how everyone should feel free to express themselves exactly as they like! You can read this wonderful story, read by the author, here:

In this book, Marianne and Leonard are reading some beautiful poems in one of the illustrations: ‘The Road Not Taken’ by Robert Frost and ‘Hope Is The Thing With Feathers’ by Emily Dickinson. In Centaurus, we discussed how there’s a joke here in that Marianne is a duck (a thing with feathers) but there’s also symbolism as Marianne probably represents hope in Leonard’s situation.