Skip to main content

Five Faves: Unicorn Wannabes

Unicorns are magical, sparkly, and everyone seems to love them! Not only do others love them, sometimes, creatures just want to BE them. Here are five books where other creatures want to be a Unicorn, or think that they are Unicorns. Take a look at some of these Unicorn Wannabes!

Written by Shannon Hale
Illustrated by LeUyen Pham
New York : Abrams Books for Young Readers, 2021. Picture Book.

Kitty looks like a kitty but feels like a unicorn. When others start to tease her, she starts to question who she is. She finds some friends that help her to embrace who she is.

By Helen Yoon
Somerville, Massachusetts : Candlewick Press, 2022. Picture Book.

A little calf is born with only one horn and decides that they are a unicorn! As the calf continues to do more research and then later meets some real unicorns, the little calf starts to let doubt creep in and question who they are. 

Written by Matilda Rose
Illustrated by Tim Budgen
New York : Abrams Appleseed, 2021. Picture Book.

When Princess Ava arrives at the Magic Pet Shop, she realizes that all of the other princesses and princes have already taken all of the unicorns. The only creature left is Pugicorn. He isn't quite what Princess Ava had in mind but after some hardship, Ava realizes just how lucky she is to have Pugicorn!

Written by Kate Coombs
Illustrated by Elisa Pallmer
Layton, Utah : Gibbs Smith, 2019. Picture Book.

In the land of Llamacorn, there are all sorts of creatures. Of course we have Llamacorns but we also have Buffalocorn, Walruscorn, Tigercorn, and others. This poetic picture book tells about the kindness of the Llamacorn as it intereacts with the other creatures. 

Written by Jess Hernandez
Illustrated by Mariano Epelbaum
North Mankato, Minnesota : Capstone Editions, a capstone imprint, 2021. Picture Book. 

Milly is excited when she is accepted into Unicorn School. The only problem is, she isn't really a unicorn! She is a donkey in a party hat who sent a misleading picture with her application. But when she gets to Unicorn School, she realizes that she isn't the only one there who isn't a real unicorn.

Comments

Ms. Yingling said…
Thank you for a great list!

Popular posts from this blog

Review: The Factory

The Factory By Catherine Egan New York, NY : Scholastic Inc., 2025. Fiction. 306 pages.  Thirteen-year-old Asher Doyle has been invited to join the Factory, a secretive research facility in the desert which ostensibly extracts renewable energy from the electromagnetic fields of its young recruits. But Asher soon realizes something sinister is going on. Kids are getting sick. The adults who run the Factory seem to be keeping secrets. And the extraction process is not only painful and exhausting, but existentially troubling. Asher makes a handful of new friends who help him with an investigation that turns into a resistance, which turns into...a cliffhanger! The Factory is a page-turning sci-fi with multidimensional characters, an intriguing plot, and refreshingly straight-forward writing. Egan weaves in detail about climate crises and social unrest, making the story's dystopian setting feel rich and plausible. With its sophisticated themes and accessible storytelling, I would recomm...

Review: Blood in the Water

Blood in the Water By Tiffany D. Jackson New York: Scholastic, 2025. Fiction. 255 pages. 12-year-old Kaylani McKinnon can't help but feel like a fish out of water. She's a Brooklyn girl spending her summer on Martha's Vineyard surrounded by wealthy family friends in their mansion. All she really wants is to stay home all summer where she her incarcerated father can easily reach her, and she can keep working to find ways to prove him innocent of fraud and embezzlement. Despite her protests, she finds herself on the island with the snooty granddaughters of her host. Soon after Kaylani's arrival, a popular teen boy is found murdered and she decides to conduct her own investigation. As she tries to discover what happened to Chadwick Cooper, Kaylani finds that not everything on Martha's Vineyard is as perfect as it appears. Thrillers for middle grade readers can be hard to find, but Tiffany D. Jackson succeeds in her first middle grade novel. A quick moving plot, tight d...

National Geographic Book of Animal Poetry

National Geographic Book of Animal Poetry Edited by J. Patrick Lewis National Geographic, 2012, 183 p. Poetry In this beautiful poetry collection, the National Children's Poet Laureate, J. Patrick Lewis, has teamed up with the amazing photographers at National Geographic. The result is 200 poems about animals, all illustrated with stunning nature photography.  The poems are well chosen and include rhyming, free verse, and shape poetry. Some of the poems are funny, many are contemplative and all are nicely typeset on top of the full color photographs. One of my favorites is a shape poem about flamingos, with a photograph of a flock of flamingos which seem to be standing the the shape of a flamingo (how did they do that?).  Lewis ends the collection with a brief but interesting section about writing animal poetry.  This selection is sure to turn any animal lover into a poetry lover.