Eighty years before Columbus, China sent ships to explore the world. The Chinese discovered many marvelous things, but one discovery stood out above the others: the chee-lin. This chee-lin was just a giraffe, but to the Chinese it was an omen of good fortune so rare that it had appeared only once before—at the birth of Confucius. In a storybook in which each page evokes the richness of far away places and long-ago days, James Rumford traces the chee-lin’s journey from Africa to Bengal to China, weaving a tale not just of a giraffe but of the people he meets along the way.
- ISBN: 9780618717200
- Author: Rumford, James
- Illustrator: Rumford, James
- Published: 2008, Houghton Mifflin
- Themes: ancient China, captivity, exploration, Friendship, giraffe, Journey, Struggle, voyage
- Descriptors: Africa, China, Historical Fiction, Picture Book, Primary (ages 6-9)
- No. of pages: 40