Lion: A Long Way Home Young Readers' Edition

Lion: A Long Way Home Young Readers' Edition

By Saroo Brierley

2 ratings 0 reviews 2 followers
Interest LevelReading LevelReading A-ZATOSWord Count
Grades 5 - 12n/an/an/an/a
The young readers' edition of the true story that inspired Lion, the Academy Award nominated film starring Dev Patel, David Wenham, Rooney Mara, and Nicole Kidman. 

When Saroo Brierley used Google Earth to find his long-lost home town half a world away, he made global headlines. Saroo had become lost on a train in India at the age of five. Not knowing the name of his family or where he was from, he survived for weeks on the streets of Kolkata before being taken into an orphanage and adopted by a couple in Australia. Despite being happy in his new family, Saroo always wondered about his origins. When he was a young man the advent of Google Earth led him to pore over satellite images of India for landmarks he recognized. And one day, after years of searching, he miraculously found what he was looking for and set off on a journey to find his mother.

This edition features new material from Saroo about his childhood, including a new foreword and a Q&A about his experiences and the process of making the film.


"The emotional journey of Saroo Brierley (Patel) . . . will melt hearts around the globe."—People magazine

"Amazing stuff."—The New York Post
Publisher: Puffin Books
ISBN-13: 9780425291764
ISBN-10: 0425291766
Published on 2/28/2017
Binding: Paperback
Number of pages: 272

Book Reviews (2)

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This book is so meaningful to me because I am from India and this man's story has been very rough for him and his families. There are many scenes in this book that are realistic and terrifying and it is impossible to not feel amazed at this man's journey to find his birth family. I can not imagine going through what he did and it was shocking to remember that this was a true story. I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to know a true story of perseverance.

This story is a story based on a person named Saroo Brierley who got lost on a train and ended up n Kolkata after a traumatizing 12-16 hour trip of not knowing where he was going. He ended up in Australia after being adopted by a couple who have been waiting years for Australia to dismiss the law that people cannot adopt children from other countries. And after 20 years, he started using Google Earth to try and find his Indian home and finds it very useful... One main lesson Saroo learns in the process of finding his Indian home that mainly impacted his life to this day is to never give up when rough times are ahead. If Saroo gave up, multiple negative things would have happened to him. To start off, he would have wasted 1 year of his life, he would have never saw his parents, etc. In relation to this, the parents who adopted him would have lost their faith in Saroo because he had given up on his one chance to do something big when he already failed doing so many other things. Also, if Saroo gave up on his dream to find his parents, he would have wasted the majority of his money on good WiFi. To sum this paragraph up, Saroo's life would have never been the same if he gave up. In conclusion, I would recommend this book because the main character is a big example to the world and he's done something very few people have done. He single-handedly mapped and searched a whole country to try and find one small, poor town called Ganesh Talai. He also never gave up for one second and POURED on layers of research. And finally, there is one question I would like to ask Saroo: "How did it feel to step in India for the first time in 20 years?"