Mags has a lot to wish for — a nice house with a mama who isn’t tired out from work; a normal little sister; a brother who doesn’t mooch for food; and, once in a while, she’d like some new clothes for school. When her sister Hannie finds a stuffed unicorn, Mags’s wishes start to come true. She knows the unicorn can’t really be magic, but she won’t let anything ruin her newfound luck — even if it means telling her own sister to believe something that can’t possibly be true. “With colorful regional language and clear psychological insight, Hesse’s debut ranks with Betsy Byars’s The Pinballs and Cynthia Voight’s Homecoming in describing families surviving as best they can under economic privation.
