MotherReader

Oh, girls love their unicorn books, don’t they? I came across two unicorn titles in quick succession, the first from the library and the second from the publisher. Let’s take a look.

It’s possible that the beginning reader book Unicorn Wings, by Mallory Loehr, is not very good. But who would notice when each page has fanciful pictures of unicorns and rainbows and roses and butterflies and bluebirds and castles and swans and moonlight on the ocean? If you’ll ever get a sugar high from a book, this is the one.

The unicorn — who for some strange reason in this ultra-girly book is a male — has a horn that can cure, but he really wants wings. He tells the butterflies and bluebirds and swans how he wishes that he had wings. But none of their wings are right for him. Boo. Then he meets a beautiful pegasus, cures her broken wing, and magically gets wings too! Hooray!

My seven-year-old daughter looooved it, even though the text is for a younger reader. It’s a beginning reader book that desperately needs a sequel. Not for me, mind you, but for my daughter.

I’d put Unicorn Races in the same camp. I don’t know that the story of the book is all that it could be, but the illustrations are very sweet. And very purple. Lots and lots of purple. There are other colors too, like blueish purple. (Okay, there are other colors in the book.) Is it because it’s from Purple Sky Publishing? Hmmm.

The story follows a little girl who waits until her mother thinks she’s asleep, and then she beckons her flying unicorn to take her to the magical place where she is the princess of all the fairy creatures. There she oversees the lovely unicorn races and crowns the winner, and then they all have lots of cake and sweets. (Actually, this may be the leading sugar high book.) Then the girl goes home and goes to sleep.

I found the text a little choppy in places, sometimes stilted and formal (though by design), which made the reading awkward. But I don’t know if it even matters, because my daughter looooved this book too. The pictures and story are the stuff of little girl dreams. Little girl princess candy-coated dreams.