Alma Flor Ada

The Unicorn of the West
El unicornio del oeste

BOOK DESCRIPTION

In this evoca­tive tale of friend­ship and self-discovery, a young uni­corn under­takes a mag­i­cal jour­ney in order to find his pur­pose. Excel­lent for dis­cussing themes of iden­tity and solidarity.

The del­i­cate illus­tra­tions by Abi­gail Pizer com­ple­ment the story.

CD DESCRIPTION

This CD con­tains the read­ing of three of my favorite sto­ries: Jordi’s Star, The Mala­chite Palace, and The Uni­corn of the West. It was a very mean­ing­ful expe­ri­ence for me to record these books, to choose the music to accom­pany the read­ing, and to share after each record­ing the story of the cre­ation of each book.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

This story was born out of the request of my great-nieces Vir­ginia Marie, Lau­ren and Alli­son Roure DeMi­randa for a bed­time story. When I asked them what they wanted the story to be about they requested “uni­corns”. So, inspired by their beauty and their trust in my sto­ry­telling abil­i­ties I began: “Each evening, as the sun set…” and the story was born. It has always been one my favorites, per­haps because of my love for the girls who inspired it, and their mother, my niece Virgilú.

REVIEWS

School Library Journal

Grade 1–3: A gen­tle story that can be effec­tively shared on many lev­els. A young uni­corn who has never before met any other crea­tures of the for­est tries to dis­cover who he is. With each sea­son, he meets a dif­fer­ent ani­mal: a spring robin, a sum­mer but­ter­fly, an autumn squir­rel. But it’s not until win­ter approaches that he hears a “melody” that seems to beckon him to a place where he meets the Uni­corns of the East, South, and North. They tell him that he is the Uni­corn of the West and that every seven years on the sol­stice, the four meet to insure that each cor­ner of the world will always know love and beau­ti­ful dreams. The uni­corn returns home, con­tent to know his iden­tity and with the knowl­edge that he has true friends. In The Gold Coin (1991) and My Name Is Maria Isabel, (1993, both Atheneum), Ada employed sim­i­lar themes of self-discovery. Here, it is inter­wo­ven with the idea that both friend­ship on an indi­vid­ual level and peace on a uni­ver­sal level are impor­tant. The story is well told and folk­loric in its approach as a pat­tern is devel­oped and repeated with each encounter with a dif­fer­ent ani­mal. The water­color illus­tra­tions are soft with­out being pale and por­tray an apt world for this orig­i­nal fable.

Image Gallery

READERS’ RESPONSES

If you have enjoyed read­ing or shar­ing this book, I would very much like to hear from you. Please click here to send your comments.