-: If I was in the break room talking to teacher friend
about the Unicorn Rescue Society,
I'd probably say, oh, it's fun.
It's like a fun, light adventure for a kid
who's beyond the Magic Tree House series,
maybe not quite ready for Harry Potter yet,
and likes mythical creatures, likes adventure,
but what's great about it is it's got this
really like learned undercurrent of like culture,
written by authentic voices.
So it's super fun and there's five books in the series,
a sixth one coming out.
They'll get addicted and read them all,
in a couple of weeks,
that's what I would say.
I hope that's what you'll say too.
You know when I was teaching,
I used to take kids through the library,
through the shelves.
And I'd be like, what do you want to read?
And they'd be like, I don't know.
So I'd be like, what about Harry Potter?
And they'd be like, no.
And I'd be like, what about Roald Dahl?
And they'd be like, no.
And I would say, what about this?
What about that?
And they'd be like, no, no, no, no.
And you know, I'd get desperate.
I'd be like, uh, what about Aesop's Fables?
How about E.B. White?
Read Faulkner, Hemingway, the Bible just read something!
And eventually what we realized was after 45 minutes
of walking through the shelves,
that the kid wanted a series.
They wanted it to be funny,
they want it to be exciting,
and if it had animals in it, that was great.
And mythical animals like unicorns and stuff, even better.
Many years later, as I was thinking of
writing a fun series for younger kids,
like, you know, second through fourth graders,
I thought back to those experiences, and I thought
the Unicorn Rescue Society.
Thus the series was born.
I think in the classroom,
Unicorn Rescue Society works really well
in a couple of different ways.
It can definitely be used as a read-aloud.
There's a lot of dialogue, a lot of action scenes,
a lot of fun voices,
if you're the kind of teacher who likes to do voices,
and it's also great for group reading.
You know, I think in second and third grade
for the highest level readers,
and in fourth grade for middle and below, approximately.
Really good for a table of kids to sit around and
read to each other and laugh together, I hope.
And then of course,
always great for independent reading.
And Hatem Aly's wonderful illustrations makes it
really a wonderful book to cuddle up with,
because there's an illustration on almost every page.
They're hilarious.
Sometimes they're a little scary.
They're great.
A lot of people do books in classrooms that feature
Native Americans, and often these are historical novels.
I think it would be really great to pair the third book
in the series, and you can read them in any order.
They're procedural, so it's, you're not missing anything.
The third book in the series, Sasquatch and the Muckleshoot,
co-written by Joseph Bruchac,
with a book that depicts Native Americans
in historical setting,
because we often forget that Native Americans are very much
a part of the modern day fabric of the United States.
And Sasquatch in the Muckleshoot explores the mythology
of Native Americans,
specifically Sasquatch, also known as Bigfoot,
but also shows us what Native American life is like
on a reservation in Washington state,
the Muckleshoot Reservation right now, with great characters
written authentically by a Native American author.
So I think any Native American study that you're doing,
Sasquatch and the Muckleshoot, the third book
in the Unicorn Rescue Society series would be
a perfect paired reading independently,
or read-aloud, or in reading groups.