Gibbons follows up Behold . . . the Dragons! (1999) with this look at another class of creatures that “live around the edges of our imagination and in our legends.” Probably spun free-form from travelers’ tales of rhinos, oryxes, and similar exotic beasts, unicorns have been described and depicted in a wide variety of forms, from the romantically magnificent near-horse to legendary Risharinga, the otherwise-human horned son of a Hindu priest. Gibbons illustrates her characteristically terse text with a portrait gallery, done in typically simple style, and adds reproductions of the seven famed Unicorn Tapestries for a discussion of the unicorn as symbol. After recounting legends from India, China, the Middle East, and Europe, and noting that the Biblical “unicorn” was a mistranslation from the Hebrew, she finishes with a page of sundry historical notes dubbed “Unicorn Footprints.” Children who enjoy skating the edges of their own imaginations but aren’t quite ready to tackle Giblin’s The Truth About Unicorns (1991) will pore over this primer. (Picture book/nonfiction. 7-9)
Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-688-17955-X
Page Count: 32
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2001
Mama God, Papa God ($15.95; Apr. 26; 32 pp.; 1-56656-307-0): The creation story takes a whimsical Caribbean turn in a seamless blend of religion and folk-art set in Haiti. Tired of living in darkness, Papa God creates light, then goes on to make the world as a beautiful gift for Mama God. Together, they design a detailed world filled with brilliance, love, and humor. Highly stylized illustrations rich in primary colors show the progress of creation as animals, birds, water, fish, wind, and rain take their place in the world. This unusual rendition of the creation tale sings to a calypso beat and gives a strikingly different and exuberant interpretation of how the world began. (Picture book. 3-8)
Pub Date: April 26, 1999
ISBN: 1-56656-307-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Interlink
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1999
A beguiling retelling of a 19th-century Lincolnshire tale that fairly dances with an impatience to be read aloud. Mouth-filling words dot this story, the context making them easily understood while taking away none of their mystery. Bogles and other horrid things live in the cracks and cinders and sleep in the fields in the old times, and at darkling every night folk walk round their houses with lights in their hands to keep the mischancy beings away. In autumn, “they sang hush-a-bye songs in the fields, for the earth was tired” and they fear the winters when the bogles have nothing to do but make mischief. As the year turns, they wake the earth from its sleeping each spring, and welcome the green mist that brings new growth. In one family, a child pines, longing for the green mist to return with the sun. Through the long winter she grows so weak her mother must carry her to the doorsill, so she can crumble the bread and salt onto the earth to hail the spring. The green mist comes, scented with herbs and green as grass, and the child thrives, once again “running about like a sunbeam.” The green, gold, brown, and gray of the watercolors show fields and haycocks, knobby-kneed children and raw-boned elders, a counterpoint to the rich text. (Picture book. 4-9)
Pub Date: March 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-395-90013-1
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1999
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