Chee-lin: A Giraffe's Journey
Houghton Mifflin, 2008
James Rumford previously wrote a journey-based story about the medieval North African traveller Ibn Battuta. This time, Rumford draws inspiration from an early Ming-dynasty painting of what the Chinese identified as a qilin 麒麟, a mythical beast with horns of a dragon, body of a deer, tail of an ox, and hooves of a horse. This qilin was, however, real. Rumford gives the creature a name, Tweega (Swahili for giraffe), and a life story. Young Tweega is born in East Africa, but hunters soon capture him and gift him to the sultan of Malindi. He, in turn, gifts Tweega to the sultan of Bengal, who then offers the beast to the Emperor of China. Throughout his life, Tweega receives good and bad care from humans, whom he aptly names Tall-Boy or Salt-Man, Chattering-Man or Whispering Girl. These encounters, along with the repetition of a phrase of future prediction, "But Chattering-Man could not have been more wrong," give this book more narrative heft and continuity compared to the book about Ibn Battuta. Rumford's artistic talents are everywhere visible, including the map of Tweega the Chee-lin's Journey (which is informed by Ming-dynasty map-making conventions) and his calligraphic transcription of the artist Shen Du's poetic description of the qilin.
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