Zoey and Sassafras 6 – Unicorns and Germs

Unicorns and Germs by Asia Citro is a magical science story for 6 year olds about a girl who looks after the creatures that turn up at her barn. The earthquake that opens it is not an earthquake. It's a baby unicorn hopping on three legs, because the fourth one hurts.

What happens

Zoey has a magic doorbell on the barn. When it rings, there is a magical creature outside who needs help, and helping them is now her job as well as her mum's. The one on the doorstep this time fills the entire doorway with a single hoof. Everybody else thinks he is adorably tiny. Only Zoey had assumed unicorns were horse-sized, which the forest monster finds hilarious.

His name is Tiny. He has a scratch on his leg about as long as Zoey's arm.

So she does the obvious thing. Rinses it (with a hose), dries it (with a blanket), paints on a whole tube of antiseptic cream (with her largest paintbrush) and wraps the lot in kitchen roll, cling film and packing tape. It's a genuinely funny sequence and it's also the method the book is teaching. Work out what you'd do normally. Then think bigger.

It doesn't work. Tiny comes back the next day and the cut is puffy and red and worse.

Here's why this series is worth having. Zoey doesn't guess again. She puts on her Thinking Goggles, works out that she needs to test several things at once rather than wait days between tries, and asks her mum how you grow bacteria. Then they cook agar on the stove like a salty beefy jelly, pour it into petri dishes, and swab the actual cut. Your reader is learning what a controlled experiment is for without anybody once using that phrase.

Asia Citro was a science teacher and it shows, though never in a preachy way. The yogurt Zoey makes in chapter one turns out to be the same idea from the other end. Good bacteria, bad bacteria, the same tiny things doing different jobs.

Sassafras the cat is the comedy. He hides under a blanket with only a fluffed-up tail sticking out, chases cotton buds, and steals yogurt off his own nose.

Nothing in it will upset anybody. Tiny is in pain and says so ("OW VERY BAD" in enormous capitals), and Zoey feels awful about it and wants to cry, which a tender-hearted child may feel too. It's fixed with science and a mum nearby, and there's no villain anywhere in the book. The only real-world note is a sensible one about never opening a petri dish once you've grown something in it.

This is the sixth Zoey book, and starting here is fine. The prologue explains the doorbell in one page.

What to read next

If this one goes down well, Bips and Roses is waiting. Same barn, same cat, same doorbell, and a problem with the forest roses that has to be sorted out before some eggs hatch.