DRAGON RACER

Can a dragon who loves racing snag first prize and save the day?

In this adorably styled graphic offering, readers meet Truff, a cheerful young ghostly warthog (who sometimes has legs and other times an incorporeal tail) residing with her still-living parents and hanging out with her forest-spirit friends Claude and Stanley. The trio meet Vern, a dragon with an ornately designed pedal-powered racing cart and a propensity toward exaggeration. Vern invites Truff and the gang to the Hippogryph Grand Prix to watch him compete, but they soon learn that perhaps Vern has not been completely honest with them. When a brown-skinned human girl named Tulip falls ill, the cure is located far down a perilous mountain pass, and Vern steps up (with Truff’s assistance) to race down to retrieve her lifesaving medicine; can Vern overcome obstacles both physical and mental to help her? Weiser’s merry tale is immediately eye-catching with its mix of animal, imaginary, and human characters (few but racially diverse). The plotting and character development, however, tend to overreach, leaving some aspects stretched too thin or others feeling half-baked with the zany busyness. The worldbuilding doesn’t always cohere, but those who can suspend disbelief and roll with the highly enjoyable illustrations may not be bothered by this.

Cute but uneven.