THE EGG

Resembling a younger Harry Potter more than a little in Robertson’s technically accomplished, though flatly uninspired paintings, a lad finds an immense egg in the hen house one morning, and dutifully takes on parental duties for the dragon that hatches out of it. Though the dragon, a big, awkward-looking creature with green bat wings and warty, outsized hind legs, splatters flames and swoops about with dog-like enthusiasm, nothing is ever damaged, no one is ever hurt—not even the neighborhood “maiden” who is tied to a post for the “damsel in distress” lesson. Robertson doesn’t even try to solve various logistical problems, such as how the egg was transported through visibly-too-small doors and windows to the boy’s bedroom, the three panels depicting a mock battle between boy and dragon are confusingly out of sequence, and though the dragon is supposed to be roaring in the final scene, his mouth is closed. Even the dragon’s search for home is a sort of ho-hum affair. A distinct waste next to such kindred books as Jerdine Nolen’s Raising Dragons (1998) and Rod Clement’s Just Another Ordinary Day (1997). (Picture book. 6-8)