OSCAR THE HUNGRY UNICORN

Oscar the unicorn forcibly eats his way through various fairy tales before finding a welcoming home with a unicorn-loving princess.

In this droll, twisted tale, Oscar, a rotund, cartoon-style unicorn complete with cotton-candy–pink body and majestically sparkly rainbow mane, looks like just another horned charmer. But a second glance at Oscar’s stony, half-lidded eyes shows that he isn’t quite so sweet after all—and isn’t quite so easy to empathize with either. The ever ravenous Oscar has eaten his stable and sets off to find a new home in a fairy-tale land, but wherever he wanders he wreaks havoc. There are entertaining scenes in the deadpan narrative: a young witch hiding in her gingerbread house; lights twinkling inside Oscar’s belly after he eats the decorations of a dragon discotheque; or discombobulated fairies whisking him away from their half-eaten toadstool homes. Still, its subversive humor edges toward mean-spirited. While there’s a certain amount of giggles due to its veering from the conventional sweet-unicorn story, this is essentially a running gag about a terrorizing, farting unicorn illustrated in oversaturated colors. The ending, in which a young princess with pale skin and purple hair on a speedboat rescues Oscar from trolls and makes him her willing pet by feeding him enormous amounts of treats, is anticlimactic.

This anarchic tale will tickle some readers, but it is far from enchanting.