My Lion King Forum

On my endless quest to obtain the "Six New Adventures" books at a price lower than $103, I discovered a book that also had six Disney stories inside it. The book was called Disney Tuck-In Tales: Stories of Friendship. There were stories from everything from Finding Nemo to Winnie the Pooh, and one of them was a story from Lion King 2 that I had never heard of. The story was called "A Little Help from A Friend". I took a risk and bought the book and went home to search for the story. To my, I could find a single thing about it.



I sat down, read it, and discovered a shocker. Are you sitting down? Kiara and Kovu meet a second time after their first encounter but before they grew up. I knew you guys would love to see this. Here are the scanned images! The first two are the front and back cover of the actual book. The next 14 pages (pages 80-93 in the book) are the actual story. Alternatively, you can view them on my Photobucket account. Enjoy!!


















What did you think? I like how Simba is actually colored right as opposed to the movie.

Wow -- this is very cool indeed! Aside from the "Birds of a Feather" comic, an illustrated story in a foreign magazine and one short story in a collection of Disney bedtime stories, there are practically no official stories connected to SP, so this was quite a surprise.

And now for the overly long list of observations:

The "Kiara meets with Kovu more than once" idea isn't too far-fetched (and looking at all the merchandise of cub Kovu and Kiara playing together, you'd think they would be constantly meeting each other), but it's surprising to have the story come right out and say that they're meeting after the encounter with Simba and Zira.

I see that Kovu and Kiara both have that distinct "SP merchandise" look -- Kiara has pointy ears and her head looks a bit squished, and Kovu doesn't have elbow tufts and has a differently colored muzzle and belly (he looks like that in the SP Gamebreak! game too). On the other hand, Simba definitely looks a bit better than he does in the movie aside from the weird-looking paws (but come on -- why did the artists have drawn him in the exact same pose on two consecutive pages? There are a lot of repeated poses in this story, but at least they're more dispersed).

And I just have to comment on these lines:
[quote]All she would have to do was lose Timon and Pumbaa somewhere along the way. That should be easy enough. She'd certainly done it plenty of times before.[/quote]
So having Timon and Pumbaa keep an eye on Kiara is something that Simba has done many times? Good grief...for someone who's so overly protective of his daughter, he's really doing a horrible job at keeping her safe. Still, it's refreshing to see cub Kiara engaging in some heroic activities instead of getting captured by a vulture and having to be rescued like in "Birds of a Feather".

(And is it just me, or does everyone look like they're levitating on page 92?)


Anyway, congrats on finding this and thank you very much for sharing, Noah!

There are great pictures but they don't load on my computer sorry

There are great pictures but they don't load on my computer sorry

Nice find, Noah! Where do you find all this stuff?

That is awesome!
Great find!

[quote="Akril"](And is it just me, or does everyone look like they're levitating on page 92?)[/quote]
Oh my gosh! You're right!

[quote="TemptationWand"]There are great pictures but they don't load on my computer sorry [/quote]
I'm sorry to hear that. Did you try viewing them on my Photobucket account? You might see them there.

[quote="DGFone"]Nice find, Noah! Where do you find all this stuff?[/quote]
Well, I found this particular storybook at a local used book store. They have a whole bookcase dedicated to Disney children's books. I was looking for the Six New Adventure books and just happened to come across this. I only saw it because I glanced at the front cover and noticed the picture of Simba and Nala, who by the way doesn't even appear in this story. What attracted me to put them online is the fact that nothing is known about this story at all on the internet. I could only find it referenced in catalogs. I doubt anyone in the fandom knew this story existed until now. Plus, I'd read a discussion on this site before about whether or not Kovu and Kiara met again. I can't find the exact thread, but regardless that issue is put to rest for good. LOL.

There are also addititional books in this "Tuck-In Tales" collection. One is called "Tuck-In Tales: Stories About Helping" and it has a Lion King story called "The Outback Adventure" in it. I wonder if a kangaroo finds its way to the Pridelands or if Simba dreams he is in Australia. LOL. If anyone has that book, please do not hesitate to scan the pages!

BTW, if anybody knows where I can get the Six New Adventure books cheaper than what they go for on eBay, please let me know.

Kiara looks like a pointy eared bat

Amazing find Noahcs, Thank you so much for posting that.

That's quite an impressive find. You're really good at discovering stuff like this.

As for the story itself, it's decent enough given that it's evidently meant to be a quick bedtime story for children. I couldn't help but notice that the set-up was almost a carbon copy of the scene early in TLK where Zazu alerts Mufasa to the presence of hyenas in the Pride Lands though.