Pleasant if unexceptional.
The way to a dragon’s heart is through his stomach.
It’s a damp, cold, spring day, and all train travel in the village of Little Chiddling has ground to a halt because there’s a sleeping dragon on the tracks. People try to wake him, but to no avail; his loud snores fill the air. The mayor offers a reward, prompting a little girl named Georgie to spring into action. Nobody notices her riding her red tricycle right up to the dragon’s snout. She waves a bag of potato chips, and immediately the dragon opens one sleepy eye. He gobbles them down, sits up, and asks Georgie for more. “Follow me,” she says. In the park, the dragon fills up on cake, cheese, and sausages. He uses his hot breath to dry the wet grass and start a barbecue grill. At a wedding reception, the intimidated groom tells him to help himself, and the dragon responds with a welcome gust to warm the shivering bride. It takes only one more demonstration of his usefulness—drying the damp fireworks for the village festival—to ensure his welcome by the community. Saunders’ cartoon illustrations look digital and kit out the dragon with red scales, wings, horns, googly eyes, and small fangs. The villagers, depicted with mostly fixed expressions, display a variety of skin tones, but the principal human characters are almost all white. Reading-comprehension questions conclude the book.
Pleasant if unexceptional. (Picture book. 3-6)Pub Date: July 5, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-60992-938-1
Page Count: 24
Publisher: QEB Publishing
Review Posted Online: March 15, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
A wandering effort, happy but pointless.
The perfect book for kids who love dragons and mild tacos.
Rubin’s story starts with an incantatory edge: “Hey, kid! Did you know that dragons love tacos? They love beef tacos and chicken tacos. They love really big gigantic tacos and tiny little baby tacos as well.” The playing field is set: dragons, tacos. As a pairing, they are fairly silly, and when the kicker comes in—that dragons hate spicy salsa, which ignites their inner fireworks—the silliness is sillier still. Second nature, after all, is for dragons to blow flames out their noses. So when the kid throws a taco party for the dragons, it seems a weak device that the clearly labeled “totally mild” salsa comes with spicy jalapenos in the fine print, prompting the dragons to burn down the house, resulting in a barn-raising at which more tacos are served. Harmless, but if there is a parable hidden in the dragon-taco tale, it is hidden in the unlit deep, and as a measure of lunacy, bridled or unbridled, it doesn’t make the leap into the outer reaches of imagination. Salmieri’s artwork is fitting, with a crabbed, ethereal line work reminiscent of Peter Sís, but the story does not offer it enough range.
A wandering effort, happy but pointless. (Picture book. 3-5)Pub Date: June 14, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-8037-3680-1
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: March 27, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Fans of the series will delight in seeing these favorites again, and Girl and Dragon should win some new ones.
A young girl and a dragon take their sweet friendship on an adventure.
After sharing the beginning and deepening of their friendship in Lovabye Dragon (2012) and Evermore Dragon (2015), Joosse puts this twosome on a journey to the high seas. Girl, forever sleeping in her same bed, dreams of sailing away. Dragon, snug in his lair, dreams of sailing with Girl. “Sometimes when friends share a heart / they dream the same thing, apart.” So they pack a wicker basket, a spyglass, and a banner and wave goodbye. The ocean provides plenty of interest with dolphins, whales, and Bad Hats with ratty beards (depicted as Vikings who differ only in the amount of their facial hair). There’s also a cat. The dreamy, highly textured oil pictures by Cecil in his signature palette of gentle grays, greens, and blues make the transition from land to sea seamlessly. With a tender nod to “The Owl and the Pussycat,” the scenery is full of diversions while the clever rhyming verse full of wordplay drifts the story farther from Home. The hazy images allow young minds to see this tiny princess with dark hair as racially ambiguous. As in many famous stories, one must leave home to find home, which is the same for these two loving friends. “With Dragon as boat / and Girl as crew / there was nothing—nothing—they couldn’t do!”
Fans of the series will delight in seeing these favorites again, and Girl and Dragon should win some new ones. (Picture book. 3-6)Pub Date: Oct. 24, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-7636-7313-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: Aug. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2017
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