by Alissa Heyman ; illustrated by Justin Gerard ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 2, 2014
Clichéd but attractive to its target audience.
What is the secret of the 12 unicorns?
In this horned-and-hooved variant on “The 12 Dancing Princesses,” a benevolent king highly prizes his unicorns, feeling a special kinship with them. Every day, a goldsmith forges new chains to keep them from running away. But every morning, the king finds the chains broken and the unicorns sleeping soundly in their corral. Villagers come from miles around to observe them, none more lovingly than a certain little girl who adores the smallest unicorn. The king decrees that whoever can discover the secret of the broken chains will win a prize of his choosing. The girl’s mother gives her a magic cloak made of gossamer, and that night, she slips between the slats of the fence unnoticed by the guards. At the stroke of midnight, the unicorns shake their heads in unison, and the guards freeze. The girl watches in fascination as the unicorns dig a deep hole, which leads to a tunnel and their escape. Fairies follow as they gallop through beautiful glades; the girl rides the smallest. She reports to the king, declaring that freedom for the unicorns will be her prize, and he gives the smallest unicorn to her as a gift. Gerard supplies dreamlike illustrations to accompany this wish-fulfillment story for little girls, and there’s much rococo embellishment both in the design and the storytelling.
Pub Date: Sept. 2, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4027-8732-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Sterling
Review Posted Online: July 28, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2014
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by Rebecca Elliott ; illustrated by Rebecca Elliott ‧ RELEASE DATE: Dec. 26, 2019
A surprisingly nuanced lesson set in confidence-building, easy-to-decode text.
A unicorn learns a friendship lesson in this chapter-book series opener.
Unicorn Bo has friends but longs for a “bestie.” Luckily, a new unicorn pops into existence (literally: Unicorns appear on especially starry nights) and joins Bo at the Sparklegrove School for Unicorns, where they study things like unicorn magic. Each unicorn has a special power; Bo’s is granting wishes. Not knowing what his own might be distresses new unicorn Sunny. When the week’s assignment is to earn a patch by using their unicorn powers to help someone, Bo hopes Sunny will wish to know Bo's power (enabling both unicorns to complete the task, and besides, Bo enjoys Sunny’s company and wants to help him). But when the words come out wrong, Sunny thinks Bo was feigning friendship to get to grant a wish and earn a patch, setting up a fairly sophisticated conflict. Bo makes things up to Sunny, and then—with the unicorns friends again and no longer trying to force their powers—arising circumstances enable them to earn their patches. The cheerful illustrations feature a sherbet palette, using patterns for texture; on busy pages with background colors similar to the characters’ color schemes, this combines with the absence of outlines to make discerning some individual characters a challenge. The format, familiar to readers of Elliott’s Owl Diaries series, uses large print and speech bubbles to keep pages to a manageable amount of text.
A surprisingly nuanced lesson set in confidence-building, easy-to-decode text. (Fantasy. 5-8)Pub Date: Dec. 26, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-338-32332-0
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Sept. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2019
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by Rebecca Elliott ; illustrated by Rebecca Elliott
by Julie Leung ; illustrated by Hanna Cha ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 15, 2023
A beautiful adventure about embracing both sides of one’s heritage.
A parent spins a bedtime story that takes a biracial child on a cross-cultural journey.
Donning a cloak and sturdy boots, the protagonist enters a lush autumn forest, venturing past “mischievous hobgoblins” and “glowing will-o’-the-wisps.” The pages are richly detailed, framed with decorative borders in a palette that is reminiscent of European fairy-tale illustrations with a touch of art nouveau. In a small thatched-roof cottage, the child encounters a White-presenting wise woman who describes dragons as “fearsome and fiery creatures” that hoard treasure and defeat knights. After learning this, the young adventurer slips into another forest, one with sumptuous, flowing ink illustrations in the style of traditional Chinese landscape paintings. Guided by the footprints of nine-tailed foxes and the advice of a white rabbit who lives on the moon, the child reaches the palace of a Chinese-presenting wise woman. In this realm, dragons are described as “majestic creatures of air and fire” who “rule in the skies and rivers” and control the rain. The Chinese-presenting parent ends the tale by noting that both worlds, though distinctly different, exist within the child and are open to be explored—and that “two wise grandmothers await / to share with you / their truth about dragons.” The book feels a little message-heavy, but it’s nevertheless a much-needed celebration of intergenerational storytelling and biracial identity. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
A beautiful adventure about embracing both sides of one’s heritage. (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: Aug. 15, 2023
ISBN: 9781250820587
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 9, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2023
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by Julie Leung ; illustrated by Julie Kwon
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