Review by Woodrow Phoenix

When she’s not at school nine-year-old Phoebe Howell and her best friend the unicorn Marigold Heavenly Nostrils pretty much spend their every waking moment together, with Marigold supplying a constant stream of facts and feelings about the magical world of unicorns. So it’s with some surprise we find there is still a lot about Marigold that Phoebe doesn’t know. Some of those things are a mystery to Marigold herself.

In this case, time spent around Phoebe’s family makes Marigold resolve to find out more about her own family roots.  She doesn’t remember her parents but “I must have come from somewhere,” she says. A visit to Florence Unfortunate Nostrils proves very helpful when Marigold’s sister produces a scroll from her handy scroll poncho. She has written an extensive Nostrils family history that stretches back 97 generations of their family tree! All that remains for Marigold to do now is send her parents a postcard to the Barren Lands… also known as Arizona. But will they write back? And will Phoebe survive meeting other long-lost relations of Marigold’s such as Infernus, the Unicorn of Death (he prefers to be known as ‘Ferny’)?

Unicorn Playlist also features the complications and paperwork of Valentine’s Day, lessons in how to be humble from Lord Splendid Humility (with homework), Phoebe’s first experience sitting at the cool girls table at lunchtime, and unicorn mix tapes. These are made the old-fashioned way to be played on vintage cassette decks, and provide the volume title. There are plenty more mildly historical and slightly educational happenings for young readers to enjoy in the next volume, Unicorn Selfies.