A Long Way Home

   "A Long Way Home" is a memoir written by Saroo Brierley.  It is a moving story of a five-year-old boy who is lost in India.
  I have been reading about the unbelievable number of children living on the streets in India- 400,000 was the number quoted.  Some children live there with their parents, some have escaped an abusive family.  Poverty and abuse are common in the big cities.
  Saroo was lost while out with his  older brother. He was five years old and his experiences on the street are hard to read.   
   But eventually he was adopted by a wonderful Australian couple. 
   I loved reading about this couple who chose not to have biological children, but instead to open their home to homeless children.  They prepared his bedroom with Indian artifacts and even fabric across the dresser from India.  Wonderful parents!
  At thirty, Saroo was able to discover his original family.  And so, he wrote his memoir.
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  Hollywood came calling and changed a lot of things - the title for starters.  Saroo had discovered that his birth name was Sheru Munshi Khan and "Sheru" means "lion".  And now the book cover looks like this:

  
   I will admit that Dev Patel was very good in the movie, but this cover takes the focus off the little lost boy and puts it on Saroo's search for his home in India.  The strip across the face on the cover says, "The search begins".   Saroo used Google Earth for many months, searching for his home. Because he was so young when he left, he didn't know the real names for any of the cities and towns.  He claims it was like searching for a needle in a haystack.
  His search for his biological family was important to the story, but I hate this cover!
  

  Here is a worst cover!  What???
I am not a fan of movies, but this movie did inspire me to buy the book.  I should have read the library copy because I so dislike these new covers on the books, and that's all that you can buy now.
  The movie was nominated for six Academy Awards.  Nicole Kidman played the role of the adoptive mother.  That pleased me because Nicole Kidman had been Saroo's adoptive mother's favourite actress.  How exciting for Saroo's mother!  She deserved this thrill!  She is the hero in this story.