 Hi everyone. My name is Steph. This is Little Bookish Teacher and today I am very excited to share some recommendations for National Unicorn Day. So this month in April I thought it would be kind of fun to do some recommendation lists based off national or international holidays. Now all of the national holidays are typically US national holidays. They don't tend to be holidays over here in Australia but there are some really fun national days that I just thought why not? Let's go with them and National Unicorn Day is one of them. So throughout this month there will be a scattering of recommendations based off various holidays based on really fun themes and I'm very excited about them. So to that end I have some picture books and I also have some junior and middle fiction titles to share with you that are all about unicorns because who doesn't love a magical unicorn every now and then. The first book that came to mind was Thelma the Unicorn by Aaron Blaby. Aaron Blaby is an Australian picture book author and writes really fun picture books but Thelma the Unicorn is one of my favourites. This is because Thelma is actually a horse who would love to be a unicorn and accidentally gets covered in pink paint and glitter one day and the world sees her as a unicorn and she becomes very very famous but she quickly learns the flip side of fame and finds that it's really tough to constantly have people after you for being famous and she misses her friend and eventually she decides to shed her unicorn disguise and just go back to living her regular life. It's a really gorgeous story and it was followed up by The Return of Thelma the Unicorn again by Aaron Blaby and in this story the world is mourning the disappearance of Thelma the Unicorn and Thelma is very reluctant to go back to being a unicorn but her friend points out to her that she doesn't have to wear her disguise all the time that she can just put it on when she'd like to and take it off and be herself whenever she feels like it. It's a really good exploration of that balance but they're really fun they're really cute I love Thelma she's a gorgeous gorgeous character. Then there was a book that I found in my school's library it's called Unicorn Club and I had not read it before it's by Susie Senior and illustrated by Leah Martin and it's about Amy who is trying to start up a unicorn club and she puts a sign out at the front of her house but nobody turns up and she's really disappointed except when she gets to her tree house she finds that instead of people her entire tree house is filled with unicorns and what follows is a really fun afternoon of unicorn crafts and sweets and friendship and it's just a really fun playful book which is perfect for any young child who loves a unicorn because it's just bright colorful and full of magical experiences. There were also two picture books that I found on Kindle Unlimited that I hadn't heard of before so there was Never Upset a Unicorn by Adam Wallace and Mary Ninn and illustrated by Elena Stupa. This was just a really cute short rhyming story about why you should never upset or underestimate a unicorn it was a pretty quick read it was very bright it was very colorful and it would definitely capture kids attention and then there was Never Let a Unicorn scribbled by Diane Elba and this is about a little girl who is trying to teach a unicorn how to use a crayon but instead of using the crayon the unicorn eats the crayon then she also tries to teach it to make art and what we discovered through it is that art is kind of in the eye of the beholder and that anyone is capable of making art. It's actually a really gorgeous little story about knowing that everybody starts somewhere that anyone can be an artist and that sometimes it's messy but it's okay to be messy sometimes. I also found a graphic novel called Unicorn vs. Goblins another Phoebe and her unicorn adventure by Dana Simpson now this is a graphic novel and admittedly I struggled with this book but I think kids would probably like it. I prefer my graphic novels to have one story lined through or to be following a particular thread of a story but this book is kind of like little short stories that are all thrown in together but they don't have delineated chapters or things like that so I found this one a little bit tricky to read but I suspect that that's because I'm not the intended demographic so that's fine but this is about Phoebe and her unicorn who are on school holidays and are just experiencing lots of different things going on during the break. So there's friendship dramas, there are alien goblins that they made at one point, there are holiday experiences like traveling and camping and whatnot so there's a whole mix of things in here that some kids will probably find really entertaining to read and then we have three juniors slash middle fiction titles. Most of these I think would probably be appropriate for ages seven to ten but you could go a little bit higher depending on the interest levels of the child. So the first book is part of the Unicorn Academy series by Julie Sykes and illustrated by Lucy Truman. The book that I read was Freyja and Honey. I did get this from my school library and we happened to have a stack of these books, clearly they're very popular. This is about a school where children go and they're assigned a unicorn and hopefully over the course of the first year they begin to bond with their unicorn which gives their unicorn extra magical abilities. So Freyja is determined to help Honey, her unicorn, discover her powers and throughout the course of the story Freyja is determined to build a unicorn robot for Honey to help Honey out, to bring Honey treats and whatnot and she's keeping it a secret from her friends and along the way she discovers secret passages through the school but also discovers that there is someone who is creating havoc and mischief on the school grounds using magic and it is up to Freyja and her friends to figure out what's going on. It's not a long text, there are chapters, you have some illustrations throughout the story to emphasise what's going on and because it's a series there are plenty of books and other characters for kids to follow. I also picked up one book in the Unicorn Magic series by Daisy Meadows. Daisy Meadows is a collection of authors, I think there's four different authors who write together under various series titles, Rainbow Magic being one of the most popular ones, but this is book six in the Unicorn Magic series, it's called Dream Spells Special Wish and it's about Aisha and Emily who are two best friends who happen to have access to the Enchanted Valley where the unicorn queen lives and where they can see all of their unicorn friends. They're called to the Enchanted Valley when Queen Aurora lets them know that Dream Spells Locket which is magic has been stolen from her and Dream Spell uses her magic to stop people from having bad dreams and so with the locket taken by sort of the evil unicorn Selena everyone in Enchanted Valley starts having bad dreams and Emily and Aisha have to try and stop it. This was a fun little story, there's a lot of adventure and a lot of things happening in it. It felt a whole lot more adventurey than say Unicorn Academy because they were travelling to a different world and there were talking animals and different experiences that they went through but this one does have slightly larger text and a few more illustrations through it so it's a slightly younger target audience than Unicorn Academy and then I think my favourite of the novels that I read was The Naughtiest Unicorn by Pitbird and Illustrated by David O'Connell. I love the cover for a start but this is about Myra who's always dreamt about going to unicorn school and having a unicorn of her own and she finally gets invited to unicorn school and she's being assigned her unicorn and everyone's getting these beautiful unicorns with names like Pegasus and Star and when she's called up she gets Dave and Dave is the naughtyest unicorn at the school he just does not want to follow the school rules which gets Myra into a little bit of trouble despite it not being her fault but all Myra wants is to go on a quest with Dave but when they end up with too many consequences they don't get to go on the quest but when their fellow classmates who are on the quest get into trouble Dave and Myra end up helping them out and proving that you can't really judge a unicorn based on your first impression it was fun it was funny it had a lot to do with friendship and doing what's right even if someone hasn't been the nicest to you and also learning how to get along when your personalities are very very different so I had a lot of fun with this and there are two other books The Naughtiest Unicorn at Sports Day and The Naughtiest Unicorn at the School Disco so that's a really fun series. So those are some unicorn book recommendations for National Unicorn Day in the comments I'd love to know if you've read them feel free to chat to me about them down below or feel free to share some other unicorn books that you might know of if you want to let me know that you're here but you don't want to leave a comment feel free to leave a unicorn emoji down below otherwise I hope that wherever you are in the world just staying safe and healthy and I will see you in my next video thanks so much for watching bye everyone