I Believe in Unicorns

Eight-year-old Tomas Porec loves the outdoors. Mountains, lakes and forests are his favourite playground, so Tomas is less than pleased when his mother drags him along to a storytelling session in the village library. When he arrives the other children are straining to look at something. Tomas moves closer, and is amazed to see what looks like a real live unicorn.

Tomas is enchanted by the stories that the Unicorn Lady tells, and starts to enjoy reading books for himself. When enemy soldiers arrive in the village the library is set alight, but the villagers manage to save most of the books, and the magical unicorn.

The power of storytelling is indeed a great thing, but I Believe in Unicorns is rather a disappointment. Using the biblical Noah’s Ark story as a device to explain the origins of a mythical creature sits uncomfortably in the tale within a tale structure, and the double page illustrations are often badly placed in the middle of sentences, breaking the flow of the narrative and jolting the reader back to reality.

This short story is aimed at a seven-plus audience, but is probably more suitable to read aloud to younger children who are a captive audience for fairytales.