About Books:The Unicorn Novels

 

 

 The unicorn novels are intended to be a 4-book set.  Each book covers one of the four elements: air, earth, water and fire. To date, the fourth hasn't been written beyond the prologue (it's also the only one with a prologue), although the others are complete.

This children’s series began with The Snow Unicorn, and the series hadn’t yet been planned at the time. Otherwise, the first novel might have been about hurricanes rather than snow.

As it stands, the Unicorn novels represent children who aren’t believed, whether because what they say is too fantastic to be believed or simply because they’re children, and therefore, are less likely to differentiate between reality and fantasy.

In this first novel, Kayleigh is a resourceful little girl who is able to amuse herself on a snowy day when her friends can’t come out to play. She finds chunks of snow that resemble various animals – at least in her imagination – and she puts an icicle on the head of one she thinks looks like a horse.

During her play, she trips and falls. Rather than getting hurt, she finds herself in a different land, where unicorns are real. People are honored by her presence because she comes from “the real world.”

With no idea how she got there, she rides a unicorn – only those from the real world can tame the unicorns – into town, and is taken in by a woman who has no children living at home. No one has any idea how long she’ll be there, or how she’ll get home. Things simply happen in their own time.

She is summoned to the castle, and meets the King, the Queen and their children. She’s invited to a party at the castle, but ends up in her own home in the real world before the party happens.

When Kayleigh tells her family and friends about her adventures, she’s met with disbelief, and by some, with outright ridicule. Because her parents are concerned with her well-being, she pretends it was all a story she made up when she was outside playing.

There are those who do know about the other world, and one such is a teacher. She asks Kayleigh all about her experiences, assuring her that she (the teacher) went there as a child, but never had the chance to stay.

Kayleigh’s opportunity to go to this otherworld only happens when it snows. She has also been told that at 18, she will have to decide whether she should stay in the real world or move permanently to the land of the unicorns.

There are years of no snow, in which Kayleigh despairs of ever getting to go to the unicorn land again, but she does get several opportunities.

One thing that is different between that world and the real world is time. Time runs more quickly in the unicorn land, so that when she returns to the land after a few years, the King’s children are grown and his eldest is now king, with children of his own. When she has been in the unicorn land for several days, she returns home to discover barely a few seconds have passed.

When she reaches 18, she once again finds herself in the unicorn land. Her unicorn is dying. She has a love interest in this land who would like her to stay, even if the unicorn dies. But she has a budding career in the real world. She has only until midnight on her birthday to decide.

The other novels have a similar setup.

In the Air Unicorn, a boy is terrified of tornadoes, and of course, lives in an area of frequent tornadoes. Each time one comes, he disappears to the unicorn land.

The first time, he doesn’t believe what he sees, saying unicorns are for girls. But the unicorn shows him otherwise.

There are no tornadoes in this fantasy land, and he is well cared for, with many friends, unlike his life in the real world, where he’s bullied.

Again, at 18 the boy must decide which world he chooses to live in.

Not everyone chooses the real world, and their reasons for choosing one over the other are varied.

In the third novel, The Earth Unicorn, Treig is a boy whose family has moved from India to the United States. His father is given a rare opportunity to give his family a much better life in America. Unfortunately, his father dies, leaving his mother to care for her daughter and son, navigate a new land and find a job to support her family. Things are not as wonderful as they had hoped, but his mother has reasons for not wanting to return to India.

Her daughter is studying to be a dancer, and is meeting with success. But Treig, who is 10 at the start of the story, is a worry. His mother is afraid he’s getting in with the wrong crowd, and tries to find meaningful things for him to do.

Then an earthquake hits. Treig, who was very small when the family left India, knows very little about the culture. But fate takes him to the land of the unicorns. The country that he lands in there is very much like an Aladdin story, but with a unicorn, too.

Like the characters in the other stories, he is taken in by someone in the village, and the children there befriend him. And like the characters in the other stories, when he comes back to the real world, he isn’t believed.

Treig learns many things about his real culture, albeit in a fairytale-like land, and at 18 must decide which world he will stay in.

In each of the first three stories, there is only one unicorn. A new one arrives only after the old one has died. Unicorns are revered but only children from the real world can tame them, and only one child from the real world comes to any particular unicorn.

The fourth story is a bit divergent. This time there are two unicorns, one white, the other a highly unusual black unicorn. An ancient prophesy tells of unfortunate times when the two unicorns share the land. A set of twins arrive to tame the unicorns when a volcano threatens their village. Will they be able to change fate, or will they cause the downfall of the entire fantasy world? I’ll let you know when I’ve finished writing the book!

Why did I write this series? I wanted to explore children’s fantasies beyond the monster under the bed.

The fears each of the children has are of real circumstances: tornadoes, earthquakes, volcanoes. While these aren’t the norm for many children, often when they hear about them, they wonder if that could happen where they are (at least, the worriers do).

By showing these events, it may make the fear of the event a bit less. Having somewhere for each child to escape, a pleasant place where all of their needs are met and their fantasies fulfilled is a typical childhood coping skill. Allowing the child to choose which world to live in is the ultimate “what if.” The idea that some choose the fantasy world, even though, if you think about it, their lives will go by more quickly, while others choose to return to the real world begs the question, what is happily ever after, anyway?