I was a voracious reader as a child, but don’t take that to mean I had good taste. I had more Goosebumps than a shaved polar bear, and I read a whole series of videogame-themed Choose Your Own Adventure books. What I really needed was a good librarian to knock some sense into me (“Hey kid, put down that […]
Fifty years ago, Peter S. Beagle’s second novel, The Last Unicorn, was published, eight years after he won acclaim as the upstart 19-year-old debut author of A Fine and Private Place. Over the course of that near-decade, he did things like get a grownup job, get married, and have children. His debut was wistful and funny and […]
Like many of my generation, I first met the unicorn not in the pages of a book, but in full color, on a screen. In the U.S. (and particularly in the ’80s), animation meant “for kids.” While neither The Hobbit nor The Last Unicorn were written for children, precisely, they both have charming, conspiring narrators, […]