Nanta's Lion

Suse MacDonald's Nanta's Lion, is a search and find picture book. I like the set up of the illustrations and how each page help build up in the background to create the missing lion, which ironically, Nanta never found, making the story purely a visual affect. There were a couple of things that I didn't like in the book, it seemed like some of the word choices used were a bit demeaning or stereotypical;

Nanta went inside her hut. She found a gourd filled with milk to take with
her.

(MacDonald) The fact that Nanta lives in a hut seems ridiculous, one would think that the author would have just gone ahead and used the real name for the dwellings of the Maasai people, which is a inkajiijik. I just don't believe that anyone is doing kids any favors by over simplifying terms, go ahead and use the real word, that's how kids are going to learn. I also thought that it was kind of weird that a lion would go after the villiage's cattle when there is apparently all this abundant prey running around just a few miles from the camp, woudn't a lion rather do that and avoid humans? While the book has some flaws it does have some cool illustrations that celebrate the richness of Maasai culture and treat the eyes and mind to a fun hunt for the lion.