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48 pp.
| Abrams
| March, 2021
|
Trade
ISBN 978-1-4197-5091-5
$16.99
|
Ebook
ISBN 978-1-64700-128-5
$15.54
(
2)
PS
Illustrated by
LeUyen Pham.
Kitty, a fluffy pink feline sporting a stripy conical hat, "thinks she might be a unicorn." Admiring herself in the mirror ("she feels so perfectly unicorn-y"), she doesn't let Parakeet's heckling ("You're never going to be a unicorn, funny-foo") or Gecko's ("You meow in your sleep, miffy-mew") get her down--until the arrival of an
actual unicorn ("Clop clop clop...Neigh!") causes a minor existential crisis. The species-admiration is mutual, though, with Unicorn confessing that he's really a "Kitty-corn"--and maybe Kitty is, too. Pham's lively pink-and-purple-heavy illustrations, a mix of full pages, double-page spreads, and vignettes, include plenty of white space with little background detail. The creatures take center stage, and when our heroes briefly pause, standing eye-to-eye ("'Yes,' says Kitty. 'I see you'"), there's poignancy. Pham and Hale are themselves a comfortably established pair, with eight Princess in Black books (co-written with Dean Hale) and the Friends graphic memoirs (
Real Friends, rev. 5/17;
Best Friends, rev. 11/19). Their picture-book debut about embracing one's inner unicorn is a paean to self-perception, self-actualization, and finding one's people amongst the
neigh-sayers.