In Like a Lion

March has come in like a lion—but that would be my sort of lion, with a book and perhaps the comfortable folds of Saint Jerome's robes.
  

Or the Cowardly Lion, with his good homey Kansas face.  Or the lion out of whose paw Androcles took the thorn, then led around like a tame dog.  

Or even the lion in Maurice Sendak's story, who taught Pierre to care.

"I can eat you, don't you see?"

"I don't care!"

"And you will be inside of me."

"I don't care!"

"Then you'll never have to bother—"

"I don't care!"

"With a mother and a father."

I don't care!"

[...] So the lion ate Pierre.

And in my Sendak search I come upon Quentin Blake and his delightful cockatoos—as well as his Ineffective Dragon, and another lion reading, this one over a girl's shoulder.  

I obviously prefer my beasties wee and timorous...or timorous and grand.

And what book is my bookish lion reading, as he settles himself on his monument?  Surely The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.  Good reading for blustery March days, which I must turn to myself after I find some warm socks.

images:  Christie B. Cochrell, Jan Van Eyck, Baldassare Peruzzi, Maurice Sendak, Quentin Blake