Review by Woodrow Phoenix

Dana Simpson’s daily strip about a little girl and her magical best friend Phoebe and Her Unicorn rolls into its twelfth year of collected adventures with this 21st volume. Unicorn Book Club features a new look with a redesigned Phoebe and Her Unicorn logo, new style for the title and, well, that’s it really: just some new lettering on the front cover and title page. Otherwise it’s the same mix of jokes, puns, highfalutin unicorn language and meandering conversations as before. Dana Simpson’s storytelling style has settled into a higher gear than the early books, so although the general tone of these stories stays the same, they’re a bit more entertaining for adults who may be reading them to children.

The title of this volume refers to a problem for Marigold the unicorn. Her sister Florence won’t let her join her book group because when she first tried to discuss a book she’d read with Marigold, the response was typically narcissistic: “While you were saying whatever that was, I was thinking about me! Let us talk about how lovely and wonderful I am!” Florence’s declaration that Marigold is too self-involved falls on equally deaf ears. “I was not listening, and so I do not know why you are leaving!” says Marigold. Now, though, she wants to prove she can be interested in topics other than herself so Marigold resolves to go a week without speaking. Her sister doesn’t trust her not to cheat so she casts a silencing spell which is going to be a great challenge for the extremely talkative unicorn. Especially since the silencing spell won’t allow her to use her horn to send texts either. Will she be able to concentrate enough to actually read a whole book?

In other stories a game of hide and seek becomes vastly extended when Marigold vanishes for days on end leaving Phoebe a little distraught, Lord Splendid Humility encounters the unbridled arrogance of Dakota, and Phoebe realises her friend Max may have hidden depths. There are quite a few new words for young readers to learn to increase their own depths of knowledge in the glossary for this volume, with ‘Artisanal, ‘Sanguine’ and ‘Malevolent’ among the useful terms for anyone’s vocabulary. And if they encounter fuzzy growths on the roots of a plant they’ll bless the day they had ‘Mycorrhizal Fungi’ (pronunciation: My-Cor-Ree-Zal Fun-Guy’) ready to describe it.