Unicorn Academy 19 – Ivy and Flame

Julie Sykes' Ivy and Flame is a Unicorn Academy adventure for 7 year olds about a laid-back girl and a unicorn who can't wait for anything.

What happens

Ivy is the chilled one in Ruby dorm. She'd happily spend all afternoon on a picnic rug with a cookie, watching a three-horned deer. Her unicorn Flame would not. He's desperate to find out what his magic power is, and he wants it NOW.

Her friends Lyra, Sienna and Evie are busy too. They've got three quarters of an old treasure map and a riddle they just can't crack. It's Ivy who works it out, while doodling in a lesson when she's meant to be taking notes (she gets an extra essay for that).

Then Flame's magic arrives. It's shrinking magic! It's also very hard to control. A hay net ends up the size of a fingernail, and the magic map in the school hall gets smaller when it's supposed to get bigger. Oops.

What makes this one lovely is Ivy and Flame themselves. Flame is a show-off who hates getting things wrong in front of everyone. Ivy puts things off until the last minute. When she promises to help him practise and goes to lunch with her friends first, a bucket of sky-berry juice ends up on her head and Flame loses his nerve.

It's a very real sort of falling out. Nobody is the villain. They've both let each other down a bit, and they have to say sorry properly.

There's plenty of adventure along the way. A secret midnight trip by magic map to an observatory on the cliffs. A riddle about a starry place with an all-seeing eye. An enchanted tree so tall and so smooth that nobody could ever climb it. And a boy in the next dorm who might be spying for his aunt, a famous archaeologist who wants the map for herself.

Any dawdler (rather than dasher) will enjoy watching Ivy find out that leaving things till later can land other people in trouble. And anyone who's ever shown off and then fluffed it will feel for Flame.

This comes a good way into Ruby dorm's treasure hunt, since the girls already have three pieces of the map. They explain enough along the way to keep up.

What to read next

For more unicorns and a girl who's secretly scared of the one thing her unicorn loves best, try Layla and Dancer. Layla's unicorn adores galloping and jumping, and she would much rather do almost anything else.