The Unicorn Princess

Babette Cole's The Unicorn Princess is a magical pony school story for 8 year olds about a pony-mad girl who wins a place at a very unusual boarding school.

What happens

Penny Simms lives and breathes ponies. Her parents run a bookshop and can't afford riding lessons, so she helps out at the local riding centre in return for one lesson a week.

Then she spots an advert in her pony magazine for Fetlocks Hall. It's a boarding school where ponies come first and lessons come a long way second. The fees are thirty thousand pounds a year! Luckily there's a scholarship, and Penny's riding test ends with her galloping to the rescue of a bolting pony (and its very ungrateful rider).

From the day she arrives, strange things keep happening. The stone unicorns on the front steps wink at her. The people in the old portraits wave and put a finger to their lips. Nobody else seems to notice a thing.

Then there are the Pony Brats. Jade, Tracy and Benjamin are rich, rude and rough with their ponies, and next year they'll sit the test that gives Fetlocks pupils secret powers. What could possibly go wrong?

One night Penny takes a wrong turn on her way back from the loo and ends up spying on a midnight meeting of the Secret Unicorn Society. There's talk of an invasion, a prophecy and a special girl called the Unicorn Princess. And the headmistress thinks it might be Penny. Or a spy!

There's LOTS of real pony know-how mixed in with the magic. Grooming kits, tack rooms, hay nets, mucking out and the right knot for tying up a pony. If you've got a reader who already knows a dandy brush from a hoof pick, they'll love how much Penny knows too.

It's jolly and a bit old-fashioned, with grown-ups who say "spiffing" and "topping". Worth knowing that on Penny's first night her new roommates tell her their own stories. Sam's parents were killed in a hunting accident and Pip's have gone missing. It's backstory, told in a few lines, but a sensitive reader might want a hug at that point.

What to read next

If it's the magic school side your reader loves most, Isla and Buttercup takes them to another school on an island where every girl is paired with her own unicorn.