Sally Odgers (text), and Adele K Thomas (illustrator), The Happy Unicorn (Pearl #4), Scholastic Australia, June 2019, 128 pp,. RRP $12.99 (pbk), ISBN 9781760664275
The fourth instalment in the Pearl series, Pearl the Happy Unicorn sees Pearl and her friends, Tweet the firebird and Olive the ogre, attend Ogrefest – a festival for ogres. Disguised in green ogre lotion, Pearl and Tweet have a lot of fun, eating, singing and stomping. But when a group of smelly gobble-uns crash the party, Pearl needs to use her magic to save the day.
Pearl the Happy Unicorn is an early chapter book aimed at early readers. The font is a larger size, and nicely spaced to make reading easier. The language is fairly simple and there is repetition of words and phrases. There is a lot of pink – pink illustrations, pink page edges and pink words interspersed throughout the text. My daughter, who is not quite up to independently reading chapter books, enjoyed reading the pink words while I read the rest of the story aloud.
While internally the book is mostly pink, the covers of the series come in a range of pastel rainbow colours and this one is yellow, with cute cartoon drawings of characters. Amid all the soft colours and cuteness, there is humour (kids love the idea of cheeky, stinky gobble-uns) and a gentle message in the story as it promotes the qualities of being brave, clever and kind.
Pearl the Happy Unicorn is a sweet book for early readers, ready to embark on chapter books, especially if they like pink, unicorns and magic.
Reviewed by Bec Blakeney
