A UNICORN NAMED RIN

A unicorn searches for a Royal Phoenix who’s disappeared in this picture book.

Rin, a pink-scaled, blue-maned, one-horned qilin, or “Chinese unicorn,” lives on Singing Sand Hill. “When the wind blows over the dunes, it sings a song, and I sing with it,” Rin says. But it’s the unicorn’s ability to fly that comes in handy when Princess Pingyang writes that Fan, the Royal Phoenix, has vanished and must be found in time for the Friendship Concert on Peach Blossom Island. Rin thinks of places that Fan might play and visits Five Flower Lake, the Ever White Mountains, Heaven Lake, and the Reed Flute Cave, gathering his dragon, tiger, and tortoise friends along the way. Rin eventually realizes that he needs all of his pals in order to locate Fan. The magical central characters have bright colors and large, cute cartoon eyes. But their bodies take slightly different shapes from page to page in pastel-colored digital paintings with thin, spidery lines that evoke Chinese guohua. Pingyang appears as a child with enormous eyes who exerts a benevolent authority; the Friendship Concert is described as a symbolic occasion between the Tang dynasty and the Lingyi kingdom (present-day Vietnam). Both Liu’s art and Lee’s story are deftly crafted to introduce young readers to historically important sites, symbols, and mythical creatures from the Tang dynasty. While historical facts are a bit thin, an afterword provides more information.

For readers interested in magic, this tale skillfully offers a hint of China’s rich mythology.