Nerdycorn, a fun, smart illustrated book for all, plus unicorns

If the world were a fair and just place there would be 10 copies of Nerdycorn in the book rack at our local big box store. As mentioned earlier, we were there and saw copies of a book that has a similar theme, but wasn’t nearly as great at Nerdycorn. This is an illustrated book that revels in color, has text length that makes it a great good-night book, funny characters, lessons to learn, and intelligence. It also has unicorns, which for some will be the main reason for reading. If that’s the case then that’s cool, come for the unicorns and stay for the STEM.

Whaaa-a unicorn STEM book? Nerdycorn is the name that most of the other unicorns call Fern. She prefers inventing stuff to sparkly things. Instead of swimming near the waterfalls, she’d rather code things on her computer. Fern is all unicorn. She has a horn on her head, a long blue flowing mane, and her pink hue complements the other colors that her friends have on their bodies.

Fern is also very nice. But sometimes the other unicorns aren’t as nice to her. They might laugh at her glasses, criticize her painting or not invite her to parties. One day she’s had enough of this rudeness and vows not to help any of them the next time that they need something fixed.

Sure enough, the next day one of the unicorns has a broken bike while someone else has a broken phone. Fern has a soldering iron and could fix it, but she opts not to. The day of the big unicorn dance is coming up and she hears a knock at her laboratory door. They are having multiple problems with the hardware relating to the dance and ask her for assistance, to which she promptly slams her laboratory door in their faces.

Readers, as well as Fern know that this wasn’t the right thing to do. Sure, it felt good at the moment to do that to her friends who weren’t nice to her at times, but she immediately regretted it. Holding a grudge doesn’t get anybody anywhere, so she started calculating ratios for the dry ice, gathering tools, and proceeded to fix all of the things so that the dance party could happen. At the end of the party, the other unicorns apologized for being jerks and started asking questions about how they could code, create or fix things in the village too.

Nerdycorn teaches a lesson without being preachy. It sends a message to kids that they can overcome obstacles by being themselves and embracing what they do best. In this case, Fern loves science, and she manages to succeed, make friends and bring people into her circle, instead of compromising her qualities. There’s also a huge, very obvious thread in the book that being smart is cool, which is a great lesson for any student, regardless of their age to embrace.

The book is also fun and a hoot to read. The illustrations are by Erin Kraan and jammed with folky, unicornish colors, without being too over the top. Because the colors are muted and more earthy than other unicorn illustrated books it’ll bring in more readers who might otherwise avoid it because it has a land-based Narwhal characteristic. The text by Andrew Root is short enough to read twice as a great good-night book. If you add commentary while you’re reading it, which the illustrations allow readers to do via the movement and details, then you can read it once by stretching out bedtime.

Nerdycorn is by Andrew Root with illustrations by Erin Kraan and available on Beach Lane Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster.

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