The Transfigured Hart - Jane Yolen

by Tristi Pinkston | More from this Blogger

14 Apr 2007 07:48 PM

A young adult fantasy novella, "The Transfigured Hart" is the story of a white deer, a boy, a girl, and the quest they are all on.

Richard has a weak heart, and has spent most of the last year in bed, reading. An orphan, he has been taken in by his aunt and uncle, who, although caring, can't understand his obsession with books or his desire to make charts of everything he's read. Now that he's feeling better, they think he should be outside, running around with friends and regaining his strength, but he is happiest with books, and often sneaks off to the woods to read, telling his aunt he's been out playing. One afternoon, he finds a pond in the woods and sees a beautiful white creature nearby. Just a glimpse, but that's enough.

Heather is an outdoorsy girl who often rides through the woods on her horse. She has such a tendency to wander off that her family insists she leaves notes whenever the urge to disappear overtakes her. While galloping through the woods, she sees a white animal leaping away. She didn't get a very good look, but it was enough.

Both of them decide to come back the next day to see if the animal has returned, but they each have a different purpose: Richard believe it's a unicorn, and wants to touch it, just once. He spends all night reading up on unicorns to prepare. Heather believes it's an albino deer, and she wants a closer look at it before her father and brothers, hunters all, shoot it down during Hunting Season which is to start the following week. All the hart wants is to sleep without disruption by his crystal pool.

When Richard and Heather bump into each other at the pool, tempers flare. Each of them thought they had a beautiful secret no one else knew, and now that secret is ruined. But as Richard shares with Heather his belief that the hart is actually a unicorn, they decide to work together to find the animal again.

With compelling descriptions of the forest, nature, and the animal in question, this book took me on a short journey into imagination and even left me wondering if those kids hadn't indeed seen a unicorn.

(This book was published in 1975 by Harcourt, Brace and Company.)

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Learn more about Tristi Pinkston

I've been a blogger for Families.com since August of 2006.

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