Peregrine’s Curious Collection

The Fluffy Unicorn

 by Anders MacLean-Karpe

Illustrated by Julian Peters

I was sitting in my kitchen as happy as I could be. I was sucking an ice lolly (it was green and pear flavoured) and I looked outside at my wonderful garden. Suddenly I saw a few bits of flying glitter. I hopped to the window like an adventurous rabbit. Looking out at the garden I saw the top of a silver horn trotting towards the back door! I ran to the door and opened it as quickly as I could.

I saw a white horse with a strange silver horn coming out of his head and out of the top of the horn there was a little shower of glitter. It was really amazing. Bravely, I sprinted up to the unusual animal but it just looked at me.

Then I began talking to it, I said “hello” (expecting that it would not understand me at all). But then it said, “Hi!” I thought I was having a dream, then I said, “Do you want to come inside?”

Amazingly, it said, “no thanks.” Now I knew I wasn’t having a dream! I thought it would be best if I asked him what was wrong. “What is wrong?”
I said.

“My hair was all fluffy before and I was famous because I was a fluffy unicorn, but now it isn’t, because I used the wrong shampoo!”

“Oh,” I said. I started thinking how I could help this unhappy unicorn.

“Wait I’ve just had a great idea!” I exclaimed. “Let’s wash your hair with some new shampoo and see if that makes you fluffy again.” The unicorn just beamed with happiness.

It was quite hard to get the unicorn to walk up the stairs because he had four legs to think about. Finally we got him up the stairs and into the bathroom. Once he was in the bath I turned the cold and hot tap on and made a warm shower for him.

He really liked it, although he did splash around a bit and made quite a mess! I used my Mum’s shampoo which must be really good because it cost £15.99 so I used the whole bottle! The unicorn gave his mane a big shake which made the towels a bit dirty.

Getting down the stairs was a lot quicker because he fell down the stairs! He went into the garden to dry in the sun and slowly we saw his hair becoming more and more fluffy.

He was so ecstatic that he trotted around the garden. Soon after he jumped over the garden fence, waved his mane at me and I waved back as he disappeared.

City Heat

by Milo Hamilton-Raimondi

Illustrated by Anne Maduzia

(I love nature. I was inspired to write this story when I saw a toad hopping to safety into a hole while I was on a walk. My story is about an old toad who is drying out in a hot city and has forgotten his home.)

Slowly I hopped across a long stretching road, grey shadows of lifeless buildings caved over my meek figure. Sparse trees drooped in the sweltering heat, their wilting leaves crying out for moisture. The tarmac burned my tired feet.