Review by Woodrow Phoenix

Unicorn for a Day is the 18th collection of Phoebe and Her Unicorn daily comic strips. In this volume Marigold Heavenly Nostrils sees portents of doom in apparently harmless things and places. It seems that to unicorns, there are a great many things that can be omens of ill fortune including (but not limited to) “Butterflies, dragonflies, weather, noodles, the tides, falling leaves, beetles, doppelgangers, THE Beatles, doppelgangers OF the Beatles, bread, candles, feathers, explosions, cake, the number 3 …” Phoebe has taken no notes about what’s on the list. Too bad; they might have been useful later when she and Marigold decide to change places on a whim.

“You wouldn’t last a day in my life,” Phoebe tells Marigold after a very annoying day at school. The unicorn takes the challenge. “I suggest we trade lives for a day.” Phoebe is amazed she’d want to. “I am strong, I can endure it,” Marigold says. “It is you about whom I worry. Can you handle the enormous pressure of being not only a unicorn, but, well…ME?” “I bet you’ll have more trouble being me than I’ll have being you,” says Phoebe. One body-switching spell later, Marigold in Phoebe’s body is off to school, and Phoebe in Marigold’s body is free to frolic in the fields, but frolicking and spell-casting is harder than it looks. So is having fingers, and memorising facts about the composition of the United States for a history report. Which of the two of them makes the best job of being the other?

Other escapades include meeting a new creature called Glorpie, and Dakota is being tormented by an invisible mischief-maker. Is it a ghost? Does Marigold know any good spells for that?

Next in the series is Unicorn Crush.