A pretty story tenderly told and fabulously illustrated. A minstrel sings of a unicorn in a great hall, while nobles vie with one another as to which one will capture the creature. Tanisa the serving girl sees that Chris, the duke’s son, is as bloodthirsty as the rest. She attends the hunt the next day to serve at luncheon and wakes to find the white unicorn with its head in her lap. Chris stumbles upon them and draws his bow, but his arrow wounds Tanisa. The unicorn heals her and then him, changing his heart so that he promises to make the land safe for the unicorn. Tanisa and the unicorn flee until folk “have earned the right to have unicorns among us.” While the clarity of the story line occasionally falters, the pictures are simply magical. Using drawings overlaid with paint and photographs, Spalenka’s images often look like Renaissance portraits or still lifes, then like pellucid landscapes or dreamscapes. Each full-page, full-bleed illustration, with text floated over it, contains a fully realized and imagined space: The unicorn is a full-blooded creature with bones and sinew. Satisfyingly gorgeous. (Picture book. 7-12)
