Margaret's unicorn by Briony May Smith

Margaret has moved into a cottage in the mountains with her parents to be nearer to her grandmother.  Taken far from her friends and being an only child, she is quite lonely, so they send her to explore her surroundings while they unpack to make her room look as it did in her previous home.  On her way home she sees unicorns moving across the sky and then stumbles across a baby unicorn that has been left behind.  She takes it home and, with the help of her grandmother, she cares for it during the winter until its parents return in the spring. We learn all about what unicorns eat and drink as well as why they fly from the mainland to Unicorn Island each year on the last summer wind.  Enough to fill many dreams for those who love unicorns.

A beautifully illustrated story that has the feel of a classic fairy-tale and offers so much more than the recent sparkly unicorn offerings on the market.   It uses a mixture of double-spread pictures, single page illustrations and multiple small vignettes on the page to tell all about the magical winter Margaret spends with her unicorn.  The setting of the story seems to me to be the Scottish Highlands and the illustrator has captured the surrounds and the seasons to perfection in these realistic illustrations of this rugged coastal landscape.  The story is quite detailed and could have been edited somewhat but it reads well, and unicorn lovers will enjoy this one very much.

Themes: Unicorns, Friendship, Moving house, Families, Seasons.

Gabrielle Anderson