What could make a unicorn have a bad day?"Everyone knows that unicorns are perfect," starts this gleefully ill-tempered story. Cartoonish unicorns prance around a garishly bright landscape, skateboarding down rainbows and leaping over cupcakes. So when Kevin "[wakes] up on the floor," he knows that he has no choice but to "KEEP IT HAPPY." Motivational posters encourage him to "SPARKLE MORE," he zooms down Cheerful Drive and Upbeat Avenue, and aggressive billboards warn residents to "ALWAYS BE A HAPPY-CORN!" But negative experiencesan empty gas tank in the middle of a rainstorm, a steaming cup of clam juice instead of glitter soda, and a pack of hungry dogspile up. Kevin tries to keep a smile on his face but it becomes an increasingly forced grin, then a rictus. He finally snaps, yelling: "This is a really horrible, lousy, awful day!" After the slight awkwardness that follows the breaking of a unicorn social contract, Kevin's friends start to open up about their own trials and tribulations. Blending the timeless wisdom of Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day with a slight parody of current trends, this picture book is an excellent antidote to the cult of positive thinking.Slightly subversive and a lot of fun. (Picture book. 3-7) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Earnestly proving that even unicorns can have terrible, horrible, no good, very bad days, Kevin's goes downhill from the moment he wakes up flopped on the floor beside his bed. Following a chain of calamities highlighted by (but definitely not confined to) a spectacularly bad mane day and an unfortunate incident involving a cup of clam juice, not only has Kevin lost that requisite sparkle of Magical Awesomeness, he can't even hold a smile any more: THIS IS A REALLY HORRIBLE, LOUSY, AWFUL DAY! Depicted in the cartoon illustrations with big, sparkly eyes and big, sparkly hair in a variety of candy colors, the relentlessly cute, all-unicorn cast then gathers round to share woes of their own, from There's glitter in my eye to This doughnut has been stuck on my horn for a week. Yes, it turns out that unicorns (and children too) don't always have perfect, magical days. And, von Innerebner concludes, that's okay. --John Peters Copyright 2019 Booklist