Skandar and the Unicorn Thief did something properly sneaky.
It took unicorns, the glittery poster animal of every four year old’s bedroom wall, and made them feral. Bloodthirsty, bonded-for-life, storm-riding unicorns.
It’s the kind of thing I’d have inhaled between the ages of 9 and 12.
The catch is that A.F. Steadman’s books are long waits and fast reads. So if you’ve got a child asking for books like Skandar while they hang on for the next one, these are my picks.
They’re all made for the same reader. If yours is at the top of this age range, my books for 11 year olds page is worth a poke around too.
So who is this list for?
- The reader who loves that Skandar’s unicorns are dangerous, not sparkly.
- Anyone who dreams of being whisked away to train at an academy for something impossible.
- And the one who reads the battle scenes twice and has already cast their friends in every role.
What makes books like Skandar epic
The recipe is simple to name and hard to pull off. A creature or a power that chooses you. A school or a society that trains you. And stakes that feel a lot bigger than homework.
Everything below has at least two of the three.
Five books for Skandar fans
Fireborn: Twelve and the Frozen Forest by Aisling Fowler
Fireborn: Twelve and the Frozen Forest
The book everyone points Skandar fans to first, and for good reason. Twelve has spoken the Pledge and given up her name to train as a Huntling, learning to fight monsters in the snowy forests of a prehistoric world.
She won’t get a new name until she’s earned it.
Then the Lodge’s walls are breached for the first time, a little girl is taken, and Twelve is the only one willing to go after her.
Exciting, funny and heart-wrenching in places, with a heroine as prickly and determined as they come. If your child wants the closest thing to Skandar’s mix of training and danger, start here.
Nevermoor: Wundersmith by Jessica Townsend
Nevermoor – Wundersmith: The Calling of Morrigan Crow
Morrigan Crow has beaten her deadly curse, passed the dangerous trials and joined the mystical Wundrous Society. That was the easy part. Now she’s discovering that not everyone uses magic for good.
This is book two, so if your child hasn’t been to Nevermoor before, start with Nevermoor: The Trials of Morrigan Crow and let them work up to it.
Trials to pass, a secret society to belong to, a city that feels alive. Of everything on this list, it’s the one that swallows a reader whole the way Skandar does.
The Kingdom Over the Sea by Zohra Nabi
The Kingdom Over the Sea
When Yara’s mother dies, she leaves behind a letter with a strange set of instructions. To reach Zehaira, a city on no map, Yara must read out the words on the back.
What she finds is a world of sorcerers, alchemists and simmering magic, and a trail of questions about who her mother really was.
Less academy, more adventure, with the same feeling of stepping through a door into somewhere impossible. The pick for the child who loved arriving in Skandar’s world more than anything that happened there.
New Dragon City by Mari Mancusi
New Dragon City
Nobody predicted the dragon apocalypse. Three years after the dragons came and decimated the world, Noah and his survivalist dad are scraping by in the ruins of New York, scavenging abandoned homes for supplies and the library for leftover books.
It’s a survival story first, about friendship and fighting for the ones you love, with dragons wheeling over a city kids will recognise from films.
The cover says it’s for fans of Wings of Fire and How to Train Your Dragon, and for once the cover is right. Best for 10 plus.
Onyeka and the Academy of the Sun by Tol Okogwu
Onyeka and the Academy of the Sun
Onyeka is a British-Nigerian girl with a LOT of hair. Then she discovers her Afro has psychokinetic powers, and everything changes.
The pitch is Black Panther meets Percy Jackson, and the Academy of the Sun delivers the school-for-powers wish properly. Lessons, rivalries, and a mystery that turns dangerous.
The youngest-feeling pick here, brilliant for the 8 to 10 end or as a breather between chunkier reads. There’s a sequel, Onyeka and the Rise of the Rebels, when they want more.
Two quick extras
Alex Neptune, Dragon Thief by David Owen, for as long as Alex can remember the ocean has been trying to kill him, so he’s not thrilled when a bunch of sea creatures drag him to an abandoned aquarium where an imprisoned water dragon needs his help. A heist follows, featuring a sharp-shooting octopus.
And Cameron Battle and the Hidden Kingdoms by Jamar J. Perry, where the fabled kingdom in Cameron’s treasured Book of Chidani turns out to be real, and connected to his missing parents.
If it’s one specific ingredient they loved
If it’s the dragons, my books like How to Train Your Dragon list goes deeper on those.
If it’s the deadpan danger and they’re at the older end, try my books like Skulduggery Pleasant picks.
And if it’s the boy who doesn’t fit anywhere until a hidden world claims him, that’s Percy Jackson’s whole thing. My what to read after Percy Jackson list is the follow-on.
Fierce unicorns are just the start
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