'You don't have to shoot me', says the young lion. 'I will be your rug and I will lie in front of your fireplace and I won't move a muscle and you can sit on me and toast all the marshmallows you want. I love marshmallows.'

But the hunter will not listen to reason, so what is there for a young lion to do? After eating up the hunter, Lafcadio takes the gun home and practices and practices until he becomes the world's greatest sharpshooter. Now dressed in starched collars and fancy suits, and enjoying all the marshmallows he wants, Lafcadio is pampered and admired wherever he goes. But is a famous, successful, and admired lion a happy lion? Or is he a lion at all?

Told and drawn with wit and gusto, Shel Silverstein's modern fable speaks not only to children but to us all!


'[A] fabulous fable ... Silverstein is merely bidding us to get away from the noise, think a little. Reading this book about a lion from the king of the story jungle is a good place to start'The Times

'A quite charming, funny and most exuberant read' The Bookbag

'A genius... his is an enduring infuence' The Times

'That rare adult who can still think like a child' The New York Times



Shel Silverstein (1930-1999) was one of America's successful cartoonists and children's authors, whose books have sold over twenty million copies in thirty languages. He was also playwright, poet, performer, recording artist, and Grammy-winning, Oscar-nominated songwriter. Published in 1963, Lafcadio was his first book.