SPARKLY NEW FRIENDS

In this new series debut, a yeti and a unicorn bond over sparkles and snow.

While flying over mountains, Unicorn spots the sparkly snow below and decides to take a closer look. Beneath, Yeti spots sparkles too—Unicorn’s! The sparkles get closer and closer until—CRASH!—Unicorn collides with Yeti. Apologies pave the way for a newfound friendship, but Yeti doesn’t see snow as sparkly and thinks Unicorn may be just a “tricky, sparkly horse with a horn.” So Unicorn takes Yeti up into the clouds to see the sparkle Yeti couldn’t see before. Two more stories follow—a grand total of three stand-alone chapters—that further delve into themes of friendship. The comic-book layout is a predictable mix of full-page panels and two to four panel spreads. Unicorn speaks in orange speech bubbles, while Yeti’s are purple. This helps readers decode some fairly complex speech-bubble arrangements, such as when multiple bubbles connect during a long conversation. The (nearly) all-dialogue story is accessible, but the lack of repetitive vocabulary skews it toward more fluent readers. Quintanilla’s distinct color palette mixes warm oranges with cool blues and purples, creating an expressive, inviting cartoon world. The final page includes instructions on how to draw Unicorn as well as a few simple creative prompts.

Sparkly, innocent, feel-good fun for readers needing just a bit of extra support before moving on to chapter books.