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I Believe in Unicorns

Name: I Believe in Unicorns
Author: Michael Morpurgo
ISBN: 9780763630508

by Michael Morpurgo, Gary Blythe

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Overview

A tale of the transformative power of stories, told by British Children's Laureate Michael Morpurgo and award-winning illustrator Gary Blythe

Eight-year-old Tomas hates reading. He would much rather be clambering around his beloved mountains. But when his mother forces him to visit the library, he can't help but listen to the enchanting tales the librarian spins as she sits on a lifelike wooden unicorn. When war comes to their village, it is Tomas's newfound love of books that helps save the library's holdings from destruction. Set against a backdrop of encroaching war, I BELIEVE IN UNICORNS is an eloquent reminder of the power of storytelling to alter our lives.

Synopsis

A tale of the transformative power of stories, told by British Children's Laureate Michael Morpurgo and award-winning illustrator Gary Blythe

Children's Literature

Tomas Porec is eight years old when he first went to the public library and saw the wooden unicorn. Tomas hated books and reading. He would rather be outside, playing in the mountains around his home. However, when he sees the unicorn and the local librarian who would sit on the unicorn while she led storytime, he comes to love not only stories, but books as well. Tragedy comes in the form of war, and the town must work together to save not only the unicorn, but also the books from the library. This tribute to libraries and the power of reading will touch many readers. Some pencil and watercolor illustrations are done in black and white while other illustrations are in full color. These illustrations not only show the majesty of unicorns, but also the despair that comes from war. (One illustration shows two beautiful unicorns while another is of Tomas walking through his bombed village.) This story about the power of a story will touch many readers.

About the Author, Michael Morpurgo

Michael Morpurgo is the award-winning author of more than ninety books and a former British Children's Laureate. He lives in Devon, England.

Gary Blythe has illustrated numerous picture books, including THE WHALES' SONG by Dyan Sheldon, which was awarded the Kate Greenaway Medal. He lives in London.

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Editorials

Children's Literature - Joella Peterson

School Library Journal

Gr 2-6-In this layered faux memoir, a young man remembers when, as an eight-year-old, he experienced the power of story. Tomas would rather be roaming around the mountains but reluctantly listens to the village librarian as, perched on a life-size carved unicorn, she tells the story of how the last two unicorns missed Noah's ark (some readers may recognize Shel Silverstein's poem later set to music and sung by the Irish Rovers), then swam until they no longer needed legs and became narwhals. The librarian also tells a graphic story of brown-shirted men who burned her father's library and shows a scorched copy of The Little Match Girl he pulled from the flames. When war later comes to Tomas's unnamed European village, the library burns, but the librarian and the children and their families save the books. The well-intentioned voice of the man recounting the past sets wartime horrors at a remove, but this is a stiff story for children who don't have much knowledge of World War II. The stories of the past, the present, the unicorns, and the war are a lot to pack into a short chapter book. Blythe's sensitive crosshatched pencil, black wash, and full-color watercolors depict the village and the animals with enough drama to entice second and third graders, but the book's actual readers may be older.-Susan Hepler, formerly at Burgundy Farm Country Day School, Alexandria, VA Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

In a fictional episode inspired by several true ones, people band together to save their library after a sudden attack leaves their small town in flames. At first, young Tomas, who narrates, has no interest in going to the village library, but that attitude changes completely after he hears the new librarian tell stories from a wooden seat shaped like a unicorn. Eventually, she invites Tomas himself to read from a battered copy of "The Little Match Girl" that, she explains, had been rescued from a book-burning in her youth. Then an attack by air and land shatters the mountain valley's peace, and when Tomas hurries into town afterwards, he joins his father and other survivors in braving the fire to carry the library's books-and, finally, its unicorn-to safety. "Buildings they can destroy. Dreams they cannot," the librarian proclaims. Modeling forms with scribbly lines, Blythe alternates black-and-white vignettes with wordless full-spread scenes in color; like Morpurgo, he suggests a European setting but no specific locale for the story. And like Jeanette Winter's The Librarian of Basra (2005), the idea that saving literature is as heroic as saving lives comes through loud and clear. (Fiction. 9-11)