Sparkly New Friends

Sparkly New Friends (Part of the new Unicorn and Yeti Series)
By Heather Ayris Burnell
Illustrated by Hazel Quintanilla
Acorn, Scholastic, 2019. 58 p.

So this book actually comes out tomorrow—but I LOVED this new series so much when I first saw it as an advanced reading copy I had to tell you about it! In this new series Unicorn is flying over a snowy landscape and is amazed at how sparkly everything is. Yeti is looking up at the sky when something sparkly flies by—Unicorn. It turns out that Unicorn and Yeti both love sparkles. They become good friends and have other adventures together. The book is made up of a lot of dialog (complete with color-coordinated dialog bubbles that show which character is saying what similar to the Elephant and Piggie books). Also, the book has panels—almost like a comic book—that fill in a lot of the smaller bits of the story so that when the illustrations take up the whole spread kids will know that is an extra important moment in the story. There are three chapters in the book, with a small story arc in each chapter. I strongly suspect that those young learning readers who love unicorns, yetis, or clever early chapter books will enjoy this new series. Also, those readers who love Elephant and Piggie but aren't ready for the early chapter books will enjoy this length of easy reader.

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