posted on 27 Jan 2017

The Lion and the Unicorn by Shirley Hughes

It is difficult to choose a favourite book by this prolific and well- loved author illustrator but this one is definitely a strong contender for me. Her picture books for younger children are characterised by a gentle cosiness that focuses on the everyday hum drum events in ordinary children’s lives. Of course, this is from a calm adult perspective because the various catastrophes that occur like misplacing a favourite toy might seem trivial but are often quite traumatic for younger readers. Whatever domestic disaster happens is always softened by the way it is portrayed using her distinctive pastel technique and warm colours.

This particular edition is one of several books that are aimed at a slightly older audience. It has quite a lot of written text but it is the marvellously detailed and distinctive - illustrations that make it so special. The story is all about a boy, Lenny who is evacuated away from the blitz in London to live in the countryside.   Shirley Hughes is renowned for her ability to exactly capture the stance of children and she has often written and spoken about the need to spend time watching real children and to draw them from life. And so she portrays Lenny on the front cover standing anxiously and clutching his suitcase and gas mask bag. He is set against the background glare of the blitz and the mood is set for his adventure as an evacuee.

The first few pages are full of images of war and destruction and we learn that his soldier dad has given him a brass badge of a lion and a unicorn to treasure and to remind him to be brave until he returns home.  The difficult decision is made to send him away with other children to a place of safety and the picture of the children waiting at the railway station is packed with hesitant children, all looking tense and unsmiling as the adults bustle around them. There is always so much to look at in her illustrations and lots of little stories and dramas to be explored as the eye roams around the page. The big colourful spreads are complemented by black and white line drawings at the edges of most pages that provide some extra information for the reader.

Lenny eventually arrives at the rather forbidding shadowy country house and is bundled into an unfamiliar big attic bedroom with three other evacuees, glad that he has his precious badge beneath his pillow. When he awakes in the morning and looks out of the window he gets his first glorious glimpse of the countryside – something entirely new to him ‘with great spreading trees and a humped-up hill rising behind like a cut- out paper shape.’ Everything seems very strange and he is dismayed at the adults’ disapproval because, being Jewish, he can’t eat the bacon he is given at breakfast time.

When he wanders into the garden he finds a wonderful new world to explore and Hughes shows us how she is able to beautifully illustrate nature. He finds solace there away from the demands of the people in the house and is delighted to discover a stone unicorn watching over the garden as this reminds him of his dad’s badge. Another day he comes across a young man with one leg, Mick who is sitting in the walled garden and they eventually become firm friends

Other than his pleasure in the garden and occasional chats with Mick, Lenny is a very lonely and worried little boy who never really settles into his new home. Nobody wants to be his friend at the village school and the picture of him standing alone in the playground as the other children play football is heart-breaking. He has nightmares about lions and often wets the bed and is teased at school about this – Hughes manages to convey the nasty jeering of the other boys as they laugh and point at him. Once again, they are drawn with warm softness and this somehow amplifies Lenny’s discomfort and inability to fit in.

He confides his problems to Mick and is reassured to learn that there is nothing to be ashamed of in being homesick and worried as he had also wet the bed when he was sent away to boarding school. Life begins to look a bit more positive but when Lenny’s mother mysteriously stops sending letters , he becomes distraught and decides to run away back to London.  I love the double page spreads that shows him picking his way through the garden and then the countryside in the moonlight.  Terribly scared by strange noises in the hedge he runs back to the garden where he finds that the stone unicorn has become real and spends the rest of the magical night sleeping safely beside it. This magical experience teaches him to be more resilient and hopeful and this is rewarded when his mother eventually comes to visit him. Another charmingly composed double page spread shows a black and white sequence of him running to meet her, moving from a fixed and hesitant position through a slow to rapid run with arms increasingly outstretched towards her. The coloured panels on the same pages depict her in the distance as an almost religious apparition walking towards him and she is then transformed into good old familiar mum hugging him tightly. They walk hand in hand back to the house making plans for the future. The final end papers show Mick sitting alone beneath the stone unicorn in the walled garden with the sunlight pouring across them both - perfect.

Karen Argent

January 2017