Title Veilleurs: La dernière licorn Series --- Author Gilles Baum Illustrated By Christophe Merline Publisher Gautier Languereau - 2018 First Printing Gautier Languereau - 2018 Category Children Warnings None Main Characters Lia-li Main Elements Unicorns

La première fois que j'ai vu le livre, j'avais 7 ans.Je l'ai aperçu quelques secondes, par erreur. La veille, mon père était enfin rentré d'un long voyage. Avec maman nous l'avons accueilli sur le port en nous jetant dans ses bras. Chaque soir pendant huit longs mois nous l'avions attendu. Plusieurs fois, je l'avais cru perdu. La première fois que j'ai lu le livre, j'avais 10 ans.

« Regarde Lia-li. C'est l'oeuvre de ton arrière-arrière-arrière-grand-père, il s'appelait Almund.C'est lui le premier. Il a ouvert la voie.»« A chaque escale, Almund confiait le bateau à l'équipage quelques heures, le temps de visiter l'arrière-pays en solitaire. Il aimait arpenter de nouveaux paysages et les dessiner, c'était sa façon de mieux comprendre le monde qui l'entourait. En l'admirant. Et par-dessus tout, les licornes le fascinaient. »

I ran out of English library books so started on the French ones. This tale starts with a little girl whose father mysteriously disappears with his boat for months at a time, though when she is old enough she finds out he is a "Veilleur", a watcher/guardian, over the last of the unicorns.

There is an environmental theme to this story, as the unicorns are pushed out of their homelands as cities are founded a grow over the generations. And when we get to Lia-li's father, there appear to be no unicorns are all anymore, no matter how hard he searches, and eventually he gives up. But Lia-li doesn't, and when she's an adult she goes on one last journey to find the last unicorn.

The artwork was nice but not amazing, in fact the kind of style you might otherwise see in a comic book. I felt the tale was maybe a tad grown up for really young kids, what with the dying unicorn at the end, but it's a great place to start talking about what humans are doing to the environment, and whether or not we are pushing unicorns to extinction, we are certainly doing that to many other animals of which there are only one left now.