A NEW-NICORN? Unicorn Is Not So Great After All by Bob Shea

It's not easy being a sparkly sensation. On the first day of school, Unicorn can't help noticing that his friends are totally fascinated with an inexplicable new fad. His fan base is fickle.

Being a unicorn used to mean something around here.

But now all anyone cares about are rubber bands that look like other things.

"Goat, do people say I'm a yawn-icorn?"

"What? No! Nobody says anything about you."

It's even worse than he thought. Making it rain cupcakes seems to be passe this year.

Unicorn has got to up his dazzle quotient. He tries a makeover with a rainbow wig and tail extensions, bigger, brighter teeth, lots of rainbow tats, and a horn enhancer. Whimsy is the word.

But his attempts to come over as a novel, sassier self, a NEW-NICORN, fail to bedazzle.  He sheds sparkling glitter in everyone's lunch. He arranges for a drop of flaming birthday cakes in the middle of the soccer championship game.

Why does everyone wish the New-nicorn would just go home?

Bob Shea's latest,  Unicorn Is Maybe Not So Great After All (Disney Hyperion Books, 2019), with its theme of the dangers of too much of a good thing, is one of his best-yet picture books.  With cameo appearances of many of his comic characters--Goat, Dinosaur, and Ballet Cat--and chock-full of funny asides and the unfortunate consequences of Unicorn's blitz of self-promotion, this newest by author-illustrator Shea is good for reading aloud, but also bound to keep kids scrutinzing the pages to discover Shea's scribbly sight gags around the page which add extra fun to the story--with the extra bonus that Unicorn's classmates readily forgive his excesses and, sans sass and razzle dazzle, still count him a friend.

Share this new one with Bob Shea's earlier giggle-creator, Unicorn Thinks He's Pretty Great.