Born Free : A LIONESS OF TWO WORLDS
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
First published in 1960 and closely followed by a hit movie of the same name, Joy Adamson's now classic memoir Born Free continues to introduce countless young people to the wildlife of Africa. Adamson recounts her adventures as the surrogate mother of an orphaned lion cub named Elsa (with parenting duties shared by her husband George and by a delightfully imperturbable rock hyrax named Pati), whom she raised as a welcome member of her human and animal family while painstakingly teaching Elsa the skills she would need to survive in the wild. Her teaching, against all odds, was effective: three years later, the Adamsons took Elsa to a place near that of her birth and set her loose, hoping that she would find her "real pride" among other lions of the Kenya grasslands--as she soon did.
Long targeted to preteen readers, Born Free is in fact a sophisticated work of environmental consciousness-raising, for Joy Adamson believed that any relationship between humans and wild animals had to be conditioned by an attitude "of absolute equality quite different from that between a dog and his master." Although Elsa's story had an ultimately tragic ending--the young lioness died of disease and, in separate incidents, Joy and George Adamson were both murdered--Joy Adamson's book continues to instruct and entertain readers of all ages. --Gregory McNamee
--This text refers to the
Paperback
edition.
Review
"Moving and incredible...[with] some of the most extraordinary photographs ever seen."
-- New York Times
"Elsa and the Adamsons are ideal figures in a peaceable kingdom."
-- New Yorker
"Reads like a letter from Eden to homesick humanity."
-- New York Herald Tribune
A gifted artist, Joy Adamson was born in Austria and educated in Vienna, where she studied music, sculpture, and painting. At twenty-six, she went to Kenya to visit friends and remained there until her death in 1980. As a well-known painter and photographer, she was commissioned by the government of Kenya to paint portraits of African tribesmen and to photograph the indigenous flora of East Africa, for which she received the Grenfell Gold Medal of the Royal Horticultural Society, now hanging in the Coryndon Museum in Nairobi. In addition to founding the Elsa Wild Animal Appeal, devoted to the preservation of wildlife, she was the author of two other books, Living Free and Forever Free. She was married to George Adamson, the Senior Game Warden of the Northern Frontier Province in Kenya.
Born Free : A LIONESS OF TWO WORLDS
Born Free: A LIONESS OF TWO WORLDS,Joy Adamson,Pantheon,039474635X,Animals / Pets,Behavior,Biography,Children: Kindergarten,Elsa (Lion),Essays,General,Kenya,Lions,Wildlife,Nature / Wildlife,Wild animals
Book Advices:
Recommended Books