Title One Unicorn Series --- Author Gale Cooper Illustrator Gale Cooper Publisher E.P. Dutton - 1981 First Printing E.P. Dutton - 1981 Category Children Warnings --- Main Characters Princess Alicia Main Elements Unicorns

On the fiftieth day of the fiftieth year of his reign, a good king went alone into the forest to hear the spirits tell his future. What he heard saddened him; he could not protect the innocence of his only child, the princess Alicia.

And on the very next day, the princess awoke early and went alone into the same forest. There she found a perfect flower. She pricked her finger on a thorn and wept her first tear. From that tear and a magic dewdrop, a unicorn was formed.

The unicorn grew with Alicia, gentle and guileless, safe from all hunters until the day the princess lied to it.

Gale Cooper tells her story as a legend rich in fairy-tale tradition. Her full-colour illustrations are unabashedly romantic, enriched by the details of medieval unicorn tapestries.

The artwork is stunning, you have to stop and stare at all the little details in each page, so much colour, so many characters, so much beauty. A tale both beautiful and sad, that the unicorn can only be for one who is innocent, but to grow up and become a Queen, innocence must be lost, a life cannot be lived without experiencing pain. There are so few modern unicorn tales that are as beautiful and magical as this, where the unicorn isn't turned into some kind of farce, so it makes me happy when I stumble across a book like this, and to know that while I didn't read this book as a child, it was of my generation. If Gale Cooper had written a hundred unicorn books, I would seek to read them all.