Far more satisfying in a literary sense than debates about the origins of the panda’s distinctive black and white colouring is this charming but tragic pourquoi tale from China. A cover illustration of two plump pandas, a parent and cub, each shedding a single tear, provides an effective invitation to readers that no panda lover can resist.

Having lured readers beyond the cover, award-winning illustrator Song Nan Zhang transports them immediately into the distant natural habitat of the panda. Zhang’s two-page spreads introduce a springtime world that alternates between the pastel sumptuousness of sunny mountain meadows and the lush vigour of shadowy mountain forests and valleys.

Zhang’s sunshine and shadow are a fitting complement for Linda Granfield’s retelling of this tale of heroism, sacrifice, sorrow, and remembrance. Her text, artfully superimposed on Zhang’s illustrations, elaborates on thumbnail versions of the legend.

Most recently, Granfield, a well-respected researcher and non-fiction author, has explored the stories behind the memorial poem In Flanders Fields and the hymns Amazing Grace and Silent Night. Her leap to legend is compatible with the nature of that work and one she manages well enough given the sparse background material available to her. Her account of a young shepherdess who welcomes a white panda to her flock and then loses her life saving it from a leopard’s attack reads aloud well. Readers and listeners will discover, in the reaction of the pandas (or Beishung) to the young shepherdess’s act of selflessness, why pandas are patterned as they are today. Granfield supplements the legend with two pages of facts about giant pandas at the story’s end.

The Legend of the Panda, perhaps because it’s based on a single sudden incident, concludes with bleak abruptness. To Granfield’s credit, she has remained true to a stark legend rather than padding or softening it to appeal to a wider juvenile audience. The Legend of the Panda is not only a welcome, lovely-to-look-at addition to the many panda books available for young readers, it also offers something new for a beyond-the-nursery audience.