The Unicorn Club
Oh My Goodness! Who remembers the Unicorn Club by Francine Pascal??
As I was packing up my books I came across three Unicorn Club books that I’ve had since I ordered them in 1994 when they were brand spanking new to the Scholastic Book Club. 
There’s some wear and tear on it but I keep my books in pretty good condition. The unicorn club was a spin off of Sweet Valley Twins and Friends. I mean the whole Sweet Valley franchise included so many books that I’m sure I only read about 50% of them- if that. The first book in the series starts off with Jessica Wakefield and Lila Fowler starting a dare war at school. They are now in seventh grade and the consequences of their actions are more than what they imagined. Could they be the reason for the Unicorn Club being disbanded? It’s told from the point of view of Mandy Miller and as the series continues, the friends take turns telling the stories. I really enjoyed the change in point-of-view about the books: it wasn’t just about Jessica and Elizabeth. Looking back at this cover, it feels so old school, but I like it because the girls aren’t sneering or rolling their eyes like The Clique series or like Gossip Girl (if they showed faces on the cover but they don’t on the original). There was a sense of innocence about the Unicorn Club that I guess readers got sick of. Maybe they felt the characters experiences weren’t as realistic, but that maybe why I’ve stopped reading as much realistic fiction. It became more about teenagers with major issues and “regular” kids got pushed to the back. I’m sorry but I don’t want everybook I read to be like “Push”. Instead, I’m grateful for newer authors like John Green, when I want to read YA fiction that’s not science fiction or fantasy centered.
When I was younger I gobbled these types of books up. I loved the Babysitter’s Club by Ann M. Martin, read all the Ramona books by Beverly Cleary, Anastasia Krupnik books, Boxcar Children, and I really enjoyed Alice’s world by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor. I used to walk around using the word “reluctant” from the title Reluctantly, Alice. Also, I can’t forget about Judy Bloom. It was something about all these stories that made me feel like I had friends and they were girls that had the same questions I had; even though I felt like I grew up in a world that was completely different from theirs. There will always be a need for stories like this and as minuscule as some of their problems are, they still represent what I consider the true coming of age story. I don’t think who we are as adults happens over the summer we were 18 or as we go off to college. Our experiences as children can have even a bigger affect. 
Who we are is an accumulation of our experiences. I’m not going to go into phenomenology or any of that but I’m glad I got a chance to read these books. The nostalgia surrounding them is so great, I might not ever get rid of them. I can even see where my former cat chewed at the corner.
Recently, Francine released a continuation of Jessica and Elizabeth Wakefield’s life with Sweet Valley Confidential. I haven’t read them yet, but I’m definitely curious.
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‘Sweet Valley High’ creator Francine Pascal on the sequel, the movie, and (perhaps) another book (shelf-life.ew.com)
