Unicorn Academy 5 – Layla and Dancer

Julie Sykes' Layla and Dancer is a unicorn school story for 7 year olds about a girl who adores her unicorn and is frightened of everything he loves doing.

What happens

Unicorn Academy sits on Unicorn Island. Children arrive after their tenth birthday, get paired with a unicorn on the first day, and spend a year learning to trust one another so they can graduate as guardians of the island.

Layla got Dancer, and she can hardly believe her luck. He's kind and thoughtful and he has pink, yellow and indigo through his mane. She has new hoof polish from home and a plan to paint his hooves gold and silver.

There's just one problem. Dancer is the best jumper in the school, and Layla can't bear jumping. Or galloping. Or going fast at all.

So when cross-country comes round and her whole dorm is bouncing on the beds about the enormous log jump, Layla goes very quiet and very pale.

What makes this lovely is how the grown-ups handle her. Ms Tulip lets her leave the lesson and tells her, plainly, that jumping is useful but not essential, and that her knowledge of unicorns is outstanding. Prickly Ms Nettles, who keeps beetles and is suspected by everybody of everything, says something even better. Magic and knowledge need each other. You don't have to be beautiful or clever or rich to do great things.

And then the trees start dying. Flash flies arrive in glittering turquoise and pink clouds, stripping the goodness out of every leaf, and the dead leaves drift down onto Sparkle Lake until the water can't breathe. The teachers try. It isn't enough.

Also, the headteacher has gone away, and the camping trip Layla was dreading is still happening.

This is the fifth book in the series, and the earlier trouble at the lake keeps getting a mention. It reads perfectly well on its own, but your reader may finish it wanting the others.

The other thing to say is who this is for. Plenty of school stories give you the brave girl. This one gives you the careful, bookish one who cries at the thought of the water jump, and takes her seriously the whole way through. If you've got a child who hangs back at the climbing frame, they may well see themselves here, and be treated kindly.

There's a mean girl, Valentina, who calls Layla a chicken in front of everyone. It stings exactly as much as it should and then it's dealt with.

What to read next

For another girl at the same school, Phoebe and Shimmer picks up a later year at the academy. Phoebe exaggerates everything, her friends have stopped believing her, and her unicorn is the only one who enjoys her stories as much as she does. Then a school trip to the coast goes badly wrong.