Unicorn Academy 15 – Zara and Moonbeam

Julie Sykes' Zara and Moonbeam is a Unicorn Academy mystery for 7 year olds about a girl detective who trusts facts far more than her unicorn's funny feelings.

What happens

Zara loves science and solving mysteries. She keeps a mini notebook in her pocket and numbers her clues. Her unicorn Moonbeam is a dreamer who's always going on about feelings. You can see where this is heading!

It's a boiling hot summer on Unicorn Island. The grass has gone yellow, the streams are drying up and Sparkle Lake is shrinking. That matters a LOT, because unicorns need the lake's water to keep their magic strong.

Zara thinks someone is causing it on purpose, and she's got a suspect. Mr Long, the bossy school inspector, is back. He says he's here to learn to ride. He also has a habit of walking up a staircase and vanishing.

So Zara and her friends in Amethyst dorm start spying. They hide behind the straw trolleys. They find a trap door under the loose hay in the barn. There's a dropped handkerchief with initials on it and, later, a tent to search (Mr Long's teddy bear is a highlight).

Meanwhile Moonbeam keeps going dreamy and saying very odd things. She's seeing pictures in her head. A man in a cloak. A green book. A dark tunnel. She thinks it might be her magic at last.

Zara isn't having it. Proper magic comes with sparks and a smell of burnt sugar, and this has neither. She even brushes it off as daydreaming in front of their friends, and Moonbeam is really hurt.

Have you got a child who needs to see something before they'll believe it? That's Zara. She isn't being unkind. She just wants proof. Then her own friends don't believe her when she swears she saw someone in the barn, and she suddenly knows how Moonbeam has been feeling.

It's not all clues and hurt feelings. Phoebe does wicked impressions of the grown-ups. A boy called Spike shouts silly answers at the school quiz. And Zara gets so distracted by her suspect that she puts too much honey powder in Moonbeam's sunscreen. Moonbeam licks it off her own nose and can't stop sneezing.

What to read next

This is book 15, and the girls talk about earlier adventures and how they turned out. So if your reader is new to Amethyst dorm, start with Lily and Feather. That's the one where the four friends meet on their very first day and are paired with their unicorns.