Customer Reviews

A Unicorn is Born

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I am not the target audience for this book and have never given any thought whatsoever to either unicorns nor rainbows, and when I saw this book I was just aghast. However, author Trinie Dalton knows exactly what she is doing and within a page or two I was hooked by her combination of narrative simplicity and the fantastic screen of illusion a unicorn embodies. Dalton is so specific about every last detail of her heroine's life. We get the names of the flowers, the exact length of each vibration, the heraldic symbols for the unicorn calendar, the stages of development of the unicorn language ("Uniform"), and the events of the annual unicorn mane braiding festival ("Honey Horn"). I had never worried myself overmuch about how unicorns do manage to braid their manes with colorful crystals and flowers--I guess I always thought that the grooms in the stable did it for them, or young girls who liked to decorate their pets--but here you get a sense of the young unicorn learning to use her teeth to accomplish all sorts of physically deztrous things you would have thought impossible for an equine. Trinie Dalton made me believe!

Ursula, the mother who speaks to us, has a little bit of a biological time clock working against her when the book begins, for she is over six hundred years old--in middle age for her species--and she is seriously considering adopting a young animal outside her peer group, perhaps a skunk or rabbit--when she meets Mr. Right at a Honey Horn gathering and on the sixth day of their acquaintance they made love--a magical love never seen by any humans so I can't describe it. The stud intrigues her with his tan colored beard--oh Ursula, I know the feeling! But then when she winds up pregnant I wonder what happens to male unicorns in the mother-daughter dyad Dalton so beautifully lays out here. Is there a place for a tan bearded male unicorn after the love is gone? You never hear about the male of the species again, it's all about Ursula giving birth to Uma then teaching her life lessons.

I can't reveal any spoilers but you will learn the exact chemical process by which a young brown unicorn can, as a token to the power of female friendship, actually switch colors with her best friend while maintaining her own identity. As the story gets more involved, and Kathrin Ayers' evocative watercolors more impressionistic, Dalton perceptively grows the titles of her chapters--each one staggers on longer than the one before it, so that ultimately we get a blast of psychedelic-sounding chapters that hint at early Pink Floyd. I feel sure this book is probably a good handbook for girls (and boys too I guess) who want to learn how to live in the woods year round in harmony with mother nature, her gifts and her mushrooms, and for those of us who prefer four walls and a roof, it is a teasing reminder that not everything is solved by social realism, and that the world of fantasy and love can be as useful as a good dose of Zizek. Trinie Dalton is awesome and so is her book.

I enjoyed this short story. It is broken into two parts: while the mare is pregnant, and after the foal is born. It offers a good look into how a Unicorn mates and gives birth and cares for the offspring. The book is told from a first person view which I liked because I was able to see the Unicorn world through the mother's eyes. The illustrations are excellent, as well. They are not the silly, cartoonish illustrations of Unicorns that most Unicorn books possess. I gave it four stars for two reasons: it was not long enough (I would have liked a longer story) and I did not care for the stickers in the back.

Beautiful Book, well-written, gorgeously illustrated. The illustrations show a rare respect coupled with affection for the animals and insects depicted. It is a book that invites many visits both for the text and the illustrations which support the story without taking over. The reader is invited to enter a fantastic world and urged to remain for a while. If he does, he will be refreshed and energized.