Chee-Lin: A Giraffe's Journey - Hardcover

Master storyteller James Rumford combines his love for art and history in his picture books. Each of his books is vastly different in its content, design, and illustrations but one aspect remains constant throughout his work: his passion about his subjects. Rumford, a resident of Hawaii, has studied more than a dozen languages and worked in the Peace Corps, where he traveled to Africa, Asia, and Afghanistan. He draws from these experiences and the history of his subject when he is working on a book. His book Sequoyah: The Cherokee Man Who Gave His People Writing was a 2005 Sibert Honor winner.

Grade 1–4—A lovingly created, highly unusual book that will appeal to special readers. Inspired by a painting of a giraffe created in 1414 by Shen Du, a calligrapher of the imperial court of China, Rumford researched early-15th-century Chinese voyages of exploration. Finding only brief allusions to the animal, he created this account of the birth and capture of Tweega (Swahili for "giraffe") and his travels from East Africa, to India, to China. Upon his arrival in Nanjing, the animal is greeted as a chee-lin, a mythological horned creature with a deer's body, ox's tail, and horse's hooves that appears only when there is peace and prosperity in the land. Pages of boxed text are set against computer-generated patterns inspired by textiles of the different countries in which the tale is set (African baskets and cloth, Persian tiles, etc.). Richly colored, thick casein paintings on facing pages show people of the East African coast and of Bengal, the courtyard of the emperor's palace, and the woods of the Peking park that was Tweega's final home. A hand-drawn map shows the chronology of the animal's journey. Shen Du's painting appears at the beginning, and his poem about the chee-lin, printed in Chinese and English translation, is appended along with an author's note.—Susan Scheps, Shaker Heights Public Library, OH
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