The Lion Queen

"Never look a lion in the eye,” a mother tells her fearless girl. After a field trip to the Gir Forest, the girl learns all about the rare Asiatic lions of India, and from that day on she dreams of taking care of them when she grows up. But not everyone thinks a girl has a right to such a dream, and so she stifles what she wishes for most—but a roar grows inside her. The girl grows up to become a forester at the very place she first fell in love with the lions. It is a dangerous job. Not only is she the first woman to hold such a job, roaming and roaring about on a motorbike in the forest at night, she is good at it— saving injured lionesses, trapped leopards, abandoned cubs—inspiring more gutsy women to join the ranks of the Lion Queens.

The day the girl comes face to face with a

lion, she looks him in the eye. And then she

roars back.

 

This empowering and poetic picture book

is inspired by the story of a real-life Lion

Queen, Rasila Vadher, The First Woman Guardian of the Last Asiatic Lions

​

​