By Jessie Sima
A unicorn raised underwater by narwhals, who has always known he was a bit odd, and finally finds out why.
Kelp grows up in the ocean and assumes he is a narwhal like everyone else. He is just a slightly odd narwhal. His horn is the wrong shape, he swims badly, and he cannot stand the food. Then one night a strong current drags him up to the surface, and on the shore he sees a creature that looks exactly like him. Kelp follows it, finds a whole herd of unicorns, and gets his answer. And then he is stuck, because he loves the narwhals and he is not one, and now there is a second place he belongs. What he decides to do about that is the good part, and the last few pages are worth the whole book. Jessie Sima draws it in soft blues and pinks with a lot of white space.
Most of the unicorn shelf is about how marvelous it is to be a unicorn. This one is about being one and not knowing where to stand. Your child still gets a proper unicorn book, glittering horn and all, so nobody feels short-changed. Underneath, it is asking whether you have to pick between the family that raised you and the family you resemble, and the answer Kelp arrives at is generous to everybody in it. It is also the gentlest thing here for a child who takes stories to heart, because Sima never lets it get bleak — Kelp is loved from the first page to the last, he simply has to work out the geography.