Customer Reviews

Where Have the Unicorns Gone?

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I read 373 books to my children this past summer...this was the most beautiful one of them all! The illustrations, the poetry, the deep and wonderous messages buried in the words are a rare find.

The pictures alone could tell the story in this incredibly illustrated story for children of all ages. If your children do not already have a wonder for Unicorns and their mystical beauty, they will. It will make your childs imagination run wild everytime they look at the ocean. There is nothing better then reading a story to your children that you can both appreciate. I fell in love with it the first page I turned.

Beautiful, beautiful pictures and a nice retelling of the Unicorn legend. But... The book is worth the pictures alone.

I absolutely loved this book! I picked it out as a birthday gift for my 4 years old son. It is beautiful! The art is exquisite! Ruth Sanderson uses amazing colors and symbols to put Yolen's poem into pictures: the unicorns are running away trying to survive in a world where the coldness of steel, the darkness of pollution are slowly creeping into their dreamy perfect universe. Although I agree with another reviewer that the book is missing that poetry, fairy tale fragrance usually connected to unicorns, I have to admit that I like Yolen's interesting twist. It is perfectly true that a fast pace heavily industrialized world leaves very little room for poetry, fairy tales and everything that used to represent a mystical childhood dream. The unicorns are running away from all that, becoming one with the water and the waves.

This book is definitely a must have.

I bought this book for my kindergarten daughter who loves unicorns. She is expecting a story and gets disappointed since there is no story line in this book.

I originally chose this book for the illustrations, thinking it was just a common story book. Well, it's not--it's so much more than that. To my surprise, my 6 and 4 year-olds were thinking and asking questions about this book for days after we read it. This led to several long discussions (all initiated by the kids)about how we humans impact the environment. If I had read this book on my own, I would have thought the environmental message too subtle for 4-6 year-olds, but my kids totally got it.

Oh, yawn.

OK, we all get it. Civilization is bad. The world is dying and it's YOUR CHILD'S fault. All those triumphs of mankind that allow us to preserve beauty and private spaces, the technological advances that bring us the wealth to buy lovely picture books, the comforts and conveniences that give us time to relish evocative stories with our children? Those things are bad, Bad, BAD because they drove the unicorns away, and the unicorns are NEVER. COMING. BACK.

Just another cheerful children's book.

If you want to know where the unicorns have gone, just make your way to the sea. This gorgeously illustrated poetic story helps children to understand that though our daily lives become eclipsed by modernity, we can always escape to a more wonderous and peaceful existence when we search out the natural world. Things we have forgotten or failed to notice can be reclaimed in the imaginations of the mind, but only if we search them out. Filled with stunningly beautiful art and rythmic words which flow off the tounge, this narrative about the wild and natural world verses the changing world from the turn of the century will generate interesting conversation with your little ones. My two daughters (ages 5 and 7 ) and I just checked this book out from the library last week. I am now purchasing it from Amazon because it is a "must have" for our personal library.

My 1st grader brought this home from the school library. We were both taken in by the illustrations in this book. They are really amazing. The story is told beautifully and the plot is simple. Human beings have caused all of the world's unicorns to flee into the sea. I would definitely recommend this book (to be read by an adult) for children aged 5-9. This story however, is a bit on the depressing side as it conveys an important message about what the earth has become...

Most people are struck by the idea of the unicorn: its imagery, its meaning and its origins. Unfortunately in present times the striking and semi-dangerous idea of a horned, goat-legged, lion-tailed creature has been reduced to a sugary-sweet horsy (usually portrayed in various shades of pink or purple).

Jane Yolen and Ruth Sanderson attempt to answer the question of where these animals disappeared to. The most popular story of where these creatures went to is found within the children's song, which tells how the unicorns were to proud to enter Noah's Ark and subsequently died. Legend tells that they went on to become the horned narwhal of the Artic Seas.

Yolen and Sanderson keep the motif of the sea, but bring in a more contemporary theme of pollution and environmental destruction. For this reason, the unicorns travel to the ocean and merge with the water.

It is a simple, but evocative story set in rhyme and illustrated by the wonderful Sanderson, who beautifully meld the figures of the unicorns with the facets of water: waves, foam, spray, and droplets. Though she does not *quite* portray the quintessential unicorn, this is a wonderful book: dreamy, poetic, and bittersweet.