A princess regrets her selfish behavior when her friend Morgan the unicorn disappears.

A princess obsessed with time and doing chores then throw in a patient unicorn that just wants to play while you have an interesting mix.

A beautiful quick story with breathtaking illustrations showing what it can take to drive away a friend and sometimes how hard is to find then bring them back into life. A beautiful lesson to young and old alike. ( )

I've been trying out Open Library, and this was the book I used to test out Open Library PDFs. I'm not a fan of PDF e-books, so I figured shorter was better. I chose Misty Morgan because I remembered having it and other Serendipity children's books when I was younger.

Misty Morgan is about a workaholic princess and her unicorn friend. The princess spends her days running around her castle, winding up her many clocks and doing various chores. Morgan, her unicorn friend, wants to play with her, but she doesn't have time. Eventually, the annoyed princess shouts at her friend, who, distraught, wanders into the Misty Meadows. Some time later, the princess realizes the horrible thing she has done and goes after Morgan, but it may be too late.

Literally all I could remember about this book before I checked it out was that it had pretty unicorn pictures. The illustrations are probably the best thing about the book. The colors are delicate, and the illustrator is at her best when drawing Morgan and pretty landscapes. Unfortunately, the princess doesn't look nearly as wonderful. The illustrations mostly depict her from behind. I don't know if this was to more easily allow children to imagine themselves in her place, or because something was a little off about the princess's facial proportions. The princess's face was only visible in one illustration.

The story is okay, I guess, as long as you don't mind really heavy-handed messages. For those who somehow miss the message in the story itself, it's restated both on the cover and at the end of the book: “There is a time for work and a time for play. Share time with your friends before they go away!” (32).

The workaholic aspect is weird and would seem to be more applicable to parents than to children, but, having been an Army brat, I suppose I can see the broader message of “Spend time with your friends while you can, because you never know when they (or you) will go away.”

That said, I don't know if the message would make much of an impact on kids. Child Me remembered the pictures far better than the story. I also disagree with the back of the book, which says that the story “teaches youngsters how to deal with the challenges of their world, providing them with positive solutions to difficult problems.” This book had something very specific to say (three times), but it didn't actually “teach” much. The princess went from one extreme, working all the time, to another, throwing her watch away and running off to play with her friend. There was nothing about how to recognize when she'd worked enough and needed to take time to play, or when she'd played enough and needed to get back to work.

Okay, I think I've picked this poor children's book apart enough for tonight. Child Me would probably say “Yay, a pretty unicorn who wants to play with a little girl! I want to be that little girl!” Adult Me says “Meh.”

Additional Comments:

I have one Open Library EPUB book checked out at the moment, and it's riddled with errors (lots of quotation marks turned into 4 and /). The most annoying errors happen at what I'm assuming are the beginnings of new scenes - there are words or possibly whole paragraphs missing, and the scenes begin in the middle of a sentence. It's very jarring.

This Open Library e-book was much nicer in that regard - no errors at all, and the scans looked pretty good. On the minus side, page turns were kind of slow.

(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.) ( )

There once was a princess who lived on an island and in a castle of time. The princess was friends with a unicorn named Morgan who lived in the meadows around the castle. The princess worked day and night to wind every clock in the castle and clean the rugs, so she couldn’t play with the playful Morgan. Morgan would come every day, sometimes more than once a day, to see if the princess could play, but she would keep telling him to wait and she would find him when she was ready. Morgan could only wait for so long before he felt lonely and became upset. Morgan runs away and the princess notices his absence and looks for him. She learns a valuable lesson that is said throughout the book and even on the cover:
“Remember that there is a time for work and a time for play.”

I first read this at my intermediate school library and instantly fell in love with it so much that I had to go get a copy of it for myself (plus everyone was upset that I kept checking it out). Not only did I like the story and the message of it, I also loved the illustrations. I think that when I was younger that the illustrations are what pulled me into the book. I have always been a big horse fanatic, so the illustration on the cover made me pick up the book.

If I had to use this in a classroom, I would have a discussion about the message conveyed in the book first seeing of what the children thought it meant and then I would explain it. If I become an art teacher, I would have them make their own version of the characters with multi-media drawings or sculptures.

I loved this book as a kid! ( )