BEING FRIENDS WITH DRAGONS

There are many reasons to be friends with dragons, yet they, just like humans, can make mistakes.

While dragons’ fire-breathing abilities mean their friends will always have perfectly toasted marshmallows, flames unintentionally come out of their mouths when they get mad, which can be dangerous indeed. Dragons can help you reach items on the highest shelves…alas, they are not always the best at sharing what they find up there. Fortunately, although dragons can sometimes “forget to be good friends,” they do know how to apologize and “clean up any mess they have made.” These are just some of the many attributes that Locke weighs in this thinly veiled attempt to teach young children good behavior, such as sharing and taking turns, and positive values, such as patience and compromise. A casually diverse cast of children (including a boy using a wheelchair) and endearing, facially expressive, multicolored dragons make this engaging book worthy of readers’ time. The bright, colorful cartoony illustrations are rambunctiously fun and include witty subtleties, though some details get swallowed by the gutter. The text is at once lighthearted and instructive as a reminder of qualities that are important to find in both ourselves and our loved ones.

A “talon-ted” tightrope walk between character education and entertaining whimsy.