Customer Reviews

The Lion And The Unicorn

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Shirley Hughes is best known for her famous 'Alfie' books in which she takes ordinary urban life, and through her warm prose and beautiful illustrations, changes it into something magical. In 'The Lion and the Unicorn' she goes in a slightly different direction, making a slightly older boy her protagonist, setting it against a backdrop of World War Two, and having her narrative flow along to heighten all of Lenny's experiences of fear and anxiety in the war rather than pinpoint one particular event or circumstance. Although the book is not specific about how much time it emcompasses, one could easily imagine that it takes place over several years.

Lenny is a young boy living in war-time London, where the nights are regularly filled with the sounds of bombs and airplanes. His father is already at the war, sending him letters filled with pictures (one in particular has a pencil-drawn unicorn) and leaving him as the keeper of a medallion with a fighting lion and unicorn upon it. When a home nearby is destroyed, Lenny's mother takes him to the train station to be evacuted, leading to a confused and heartbreaking separation. Lenny is taken to a large old house in the country (and Hughes's illustrations magnifiently capture its grandeur and beauty by day and its gloominess and vastness by night) where he is faced with sleeping by himself in a strange room, being bullied by children at school because of his bedwetting, and his refusal to eat bacon/pork as served by the head maid.

From here things move both up and down. His bed wetting (with help from a kindly young maid) improves, only to get worse when letters from his mother stop coming. The taunts at school intensify, and the other girls at the house are malicious. Only one thing seems to give him any comfit - the discovery of a walled garden (and here Hughes's love of the Secret Garden [she has illustrated an edition], shines through) with the graceful statue of a unicorn inside. There he also meets a strange and quiet one-legged man who speaks to him about the deeper meanings of courage, and how one is able to grasp it.

The two images of the lion and the unicorn are prevailent throughout the book, in a way they symbolise the battle between fear and bravery, but also the two *types* of bravery: the lion as the raging courage soldiers must have as they go into battle, the unicorn as the more passive, quiet courage that Lenny is desparately trying to achieve.

Shirley Hughes once more delievers a beautiful and poignant book (though many may not be used to anything but her Alfie collection) that captures the intensity and real fear that children possess, and the difficult circumstances in which courage was won. Younger children may be a little confused at the winding pace and style of the story (they expect a clear-cut beginning, middle and ending resolution), but Hughes's illustrations successfully bring the life and times of the second World War to today, nostalgically and relevently.