Lucy imagines herself as a princess, but throughout is clearly a colorful little girl who loves to pretend and imagine. She does a mix of large format pages and then more detailed ones that show all of the trouble that Sparkle manages to get into. Young’s illustrations are very appealing. And in the end, I think readers are going to fall for Sparkle too and realize that the idealized unicorn may be very dull compared to one very active goat. In fact, it’s a unicorn book about a goat and a girl who learns to love him.
Even better, it’s a unicorn book with a “unicorn” that farts, smells and has fleas. However, it’s not that kind of a picture book at all and I can’t resist a book that surprises me this much. I must admit that I expected this book to be overly sweet, rather too sparkly and filled with too much princess and unicorn fluff. Perhaps it’s not important to be the perfect unicorn after all. In the meantime, Sparkle turns out to be scared of storms, butterflies love him, and he makes Lucy laugh. Lucy decides to return Sparkle, but the man can’t come and get him until the next day. She can’t ride him at all and he doesn’t behave at show-and-tell. He also eats underwear, his flower necklace and the tutu Lucy puts on him. He does love cupcakes, but that’s not all he loves to eat. But when the box finally arrives, Sparkle is not what she expected at all. She will ride on him and name him Sparkle. It is sure to be blue with a pink tail and pink mane. When Lucy sends away for her 25 cent unicorn, she has big dreams of what it’s going to look like. Ages 2 6.A Unicorn Named Sparkle by Amy Young ( InfoSoup)
Her message to readers is clear: self-awareness and finding a soul mate don't always come easily. "She had to admit: sometimes he made her smile and sometimes he made her laugh," writes Young (Don't Eat the Baby!), whose storytelling and watercolor cartooning are spot-on in their comic timing.
Clearly, Sparkle will never be the flashy showpiece Lucy dreamed of but maybe Lucy isn't the dainty princess type, either. Come to think of it, he's as stubborn as Lucy, with her relentless insistence that Sparkle is really a unicorn and therefore should wear a flower necklace and tutu (both of which prove edible). He also smells like a goat, eats like a goat, and is stubborn like a goat. The specimen that shows up, however, looks a lot like a goat. After sending away for a mail-order unicorn (only 25 cents!), Young's heroine, Lucy, fantasizes about naming him Sparkle, garlanding him with flowers, and riding over rainbows on his back.
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