Heather Ayris Burnell

{My thoughts} – A fun new beginner reader series. Unicorn and Yeti are two unlikely friends. Unicorn has magic and Yetti doesn’t. However, the two of them find things to do together they they both enjoy. One of those things is a fun snowball fight. It does take Unicorn a bit to figure out how to participate with hooves, but once she does they have a lot of fun.

I really enjoy how the text and the images blend together flawlessly. I also like how it is written in a beginner graphic novel show more like way. I enjoy books like this because to me they help to keep young children interested in reading. They don’t use a whole lot of text, but mostly the illustrations tell the story. Books like this are perfect for young readers and have a lot of potential. I look forward to reading more books in this series in the future. show less

This is one of the new Acorn readers from Scholastic. The Branches books, meant to be a branch from easy reader to chapter book, have been a huge success with my readers. Kids up to 5th grade devour Dragon Masters, Notebook of Doom, and Owl Diaries, among others. This new line is meant to hit that spot right between early leveled readers and beginning chapter books, where you'd find, say, Frog and Toad, Henry and Mudge, etc. In fact, some of the series coming out later are actually remade show more from easy reader series like Rylant's Poppleton.

I sampled a couple books from the series and first I'm looking at Unicorn and Yet. The first book, Sparkly new friends, introduces Unicorn who is pink, has a rainbow mane, can fly, and is, well, sparkly. Yeti is big and fluffy and... not so sparkly. Or is he? When Unicorn sees something sparkling, he flies down to investigate and discovers Yeti. By crashing into him. Yeti wishes he was sparkly and Unicorn decides to convince him that he - and the snow - do have sparkles! In the second and third chapters, their friendship continues as they discover things that are different and the same about each other and learn more about their different abilities.

The pictures are cute and colorful; Yeti has a male pronoun at the end of the book but I didn't see one for Unicorn so I've decided he's a boy because I was annoyed that they defaulted to Yeti as male. Lots of sparkles, pastel colors, and little cartoon figures dot the pages. The book is laid out like a comic book, with different colored word balloons (Unicorn is orange and Yeti is purple) and a mixture of panels and full-page illustrations.

They are calling them early readers, but after due consideration I have decided to put them in with beginning chapter books. Physically, the books are smaller than a Branches book - about 7x5 inches - and 56 pages long. They include a drawing tutorial and an encouragement to tell your own story in the back. Most Branches books are a 400-500 lexile and these seem to be coming in at a 300-400. More generally, I've found that kids are being pushed to read younger but are falling behind and losing interest earlier. Having an easy series in with the beginning chapter books will attract both younger and older readers.

Verdict: With a unicorn and Scholastic's track record of success with Branches, there's no argument that this is a necessary purchase. The only decision is the best spot to put them and how many copies to purchase.

ISBN: 9781338329018; Published April 2019 by Scholastic; Borrowed from another library in my consortium show less

This is an early reader. I know it’s a series but it’s the first one I have read. I have been attracted to the book cover Pinterest. This is adorable. It really reminds me of the Whisper the Unicorn books. I haven’t read one of those in decades, but as I’m reading through it, that’s what I think of. These are short little beignets, easy to read first chapters, lots of colors and simple words. It would not surprise me if these were frequent checkouts.

Bedtime Monsters is a bilingual story about a young boy named Paul who does not want to go to bed. Paul becomes a "monster" and his parents calm him down for bedtime. This story is in both English and Spanish but the illustrations tell most of the story. As someone who is not fluent in Spanish I love this book because the words are very simple so II can read it to my bilingual students is Spanish and many of them can relate to the story because many of them do not want to go to bed.