Eli by Bill Peet

Eli is an old, lonely lion that comes to aid of a vulture one day. The vultures are so grateful that they start to follow Eli around wherever he goes. One day he is fed up and yells unkind things to them and says to leave him alone. They go but say that they will always be his friend and hope that they can help him one day. One day the vulture he helped was flying when he saw a tribe of men tracking Eli so they could kill him. The vulture flew ahead and found him and planned a scheme so the people would think he was dead. He had all of his vulture friends pretend to be peaking at his body so it looked as if Eli had died. The plan worked and the men walked away. After that, the friends were always close to one another. I chose this book because I picked out Randy’s Dandy Lions and it had lions too. The way that he does the friendship theme in his stories seems to be the same. It always shows up in an unlikely pair.