A charming tale of friendship, family, and the ups and downs of dragon ownership.
A girl and her pet dragon cope with changes.
Timir is no ordinary dragon—not that any dragons are ordinary. He talks when he’s with his person, Luma, a British Pakistani girl, but when anyone else is around, he turns into a dog. The only other person who knows Timir’s secret is Luma’s Nani (grandmother). In “The Hiccupping Dragon,” the first story in this book, Timir finds himself with the hiccups. Nani tells Luma and Timir that means that Timir’s flame is on its way—in other words, he’ll be able to breathe fire. Timir doesn’t like fire, but Nani says that the charm bracelet she gave Luma contains a locket to render the flame harmless—if only Luma can figure out how to open it. In the second story of the book, “The Prickly Tickle,” Luma and Timir prepare for a dog show, but it ends up coinciding with the dragon finally learning to fly. And, of course, he does not like flying—it makes him feel “prickly” and “tickly.” Meanwhile Luma is worried about Timir spreading his wings too far and never returning to her. Accompanied by adorable black-and-white illustrations, this second installment in the series is a sweet tale that makes for easy, breezy reading, with a relatable focus on friendship and fears coupled with themes of magic.
A charming tale of friendship, family, and the ups and downs of dragon ownership. (Fiction. 6-9)Pub Date: Aug. 9, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-80130-028-5
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Welbeck Flame
Review Posted Online: Sept. 27, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2022
A brisk if bland offering for series fans, but cleverer metafictive romps abound.
The titular cookie runs off the page at a bookstore storytime, pursued by young listeners and literary characters.
Following on 13 previous How To Catch… escapades, Wallace supplies sometimes-tortured doggerel and Elkerton, a set of helter-skelter cartoon scenes. Here the insouciant narrator scampers through aisles, avoiding a series of elaborate snares set by the racially diverse young storytime audience with help from some classic figures: “Alice and her mad-hat friends, / as a gift for my unbirthday, / helped guide me through the walls of shelves— / now I’m bound to find my way.” The literary helpers don’t look like their conventional or Disney counterparts in the illustrations, but all are clearly identified by at least a broad hint or visual cue, like the unnamed “wizard” who swoops in on a broom to knock over a tower labeled “Frogwarts.” Along with playing a bit fast and loose with details (“Perhaps the boy with the magic beans / saved me with his cow…”) the author discards his original’s lip-smacking climax to have the errant snack circling back at last to his book for a comfier sort of happily-ever-after.
A brisk if bland offering for series fans, but cleverer metafictive romps abound. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Aug. 3, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-7282-0935-7
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Sourcebooks Wonderland
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A close encounter of the best kind.
Left behind when the space bus departs, a child discovers that the moon isn’t as lifeless as it looks.
While the rest of the space-suited class follows the teacher like ducklings, one laggard carrying crayons and a sketchbook sits down to draw our home planet floating overhead, falls asleep, and wakes to see the bus zooming off. The bright yellow bus, the gaggle of playful field-trippers, and even the dull gray boulders strewn over the equally dull gray lunar surface have a rounded solidity suggestive of Plasticine models in Hare’s wordless but cinematic scenes…as do the rubbery, one-eyed, dull gray creatures (think: those stress-busting dolls with ears that pop out when squeezed) that emerge from the regolith. The mutual shock lasts but a moment before the lunarians eagerly grab the proffered crayons to brighten the bland gray setting with silly designs. The creatures dive into the dust when the bus swoops back down but pop up to exchange goodbye waves with the errant child, who turns out to be an olive-skinned kid with a mop of brown hair last seen drawing one of their new friends with the one crayon—gray, of course—left in the box. Body language is expressive enough in this debut outing to make a verbal narrative superfluous.
A close encounter of the best kind. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: May 14, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-8234-4253-9
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Margaret Ferguson/Holiday House
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
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