Widely spaced lines of elegant type evoke the witty tone of Grahame’s classic, unlike either this stripped-down version of the text, or the accompanying small, childlike watercolors. (Why use teeny pictures in a really oversized format?) The reteller doesn’t edit out any of the tale’s incidents, though he has cut most of the dialogue and scene-setting descriptions, as well as some minor characters (also adding a touch of his own, by naming the boy “Jack”). The result is a story that moves along briskly, but at the expense of its literary texture; Jack’s mother barely has a speaking part, and the dragon’s generally peaceful nature is no longer mixed with that comically broad streak of outright laziness. Similarly, Segal’s tiny, stiffly gesticulating figures lend the episode a theatrical air, but are more typecast than the complex characters in Shepard’s deftly sophisticated drawings. The story’s theme of finding alternatives to violence always merits revisiting, but the original, however wordy it may seem by current standards, still makes a far richer reading experience. (Picture book. 7-9)
Pub Date: April 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-439-45581-2
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Orchard/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2004
In this send-up of a familiar tale, a hard-of-hearing fairy manages to modify the crib-side curse so that instead of dying under the wheels of a pie wagon, the princess will turn into a sleeping dragon, who can only be awakened by a quince. Up grows the princess, so perfect thanks to her other fairy gifts that she has no friends, and when the curse finally strikes, she is transformed into a huge, snoring dragon—with red lips and nails, in Fine’s typically boisterous illustrations. Nor can any wake her, until the arrival of dapper Prince Quince, whose kiss reverses the curse . . . with, that is, one important exception that only becomes apparent on their wedding night. Nonetheless, thanks to a pair of earplugs “they lived happily—and noisily—ever after.” Hale gives the story a frog narrator, a cast with silly names and the lightly applied message that nobody’s quite perfect. Set this next to the similarly themed likes of Jane Yolen’s Sleeping Ugly (1981) or Margie Palatini’s Three Silly Billies (2005). (Picture book. 7-9)
Pub Date: May 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-15-216314-3
Page Count: 44
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2008
What is it about dragons that so appeals to children and fantasy readers? While visiting his cousin Daisy, Jesse finds a geode that even a geologist’s band saw cannot open. It’s no geode, of course, but a dragon’s egg, which hatches volcanically in his sock drawer. Of the two children, Daisy is the more active and adventurous, while Jesse tends toward thoughtfulness, but they are both determined to hang onto their new pet. Of course, all babies grow larger and Emmy, the dragon, who talks in a staccato English (One. Word. At. A. Time.) becomes a handful to feed, entertain and hide. All would go smoothly if not for a new professor at the college, the very unpleasant and dangerous Professor Saint George, who has terrible breath and who will stop at nothing to have the dragon for his very own. Some tense moments occur as the children rescue Emmy from the evil professor before all ends well. The characterization is black-and-white in this mild adventure story for readers who have not yet graduated to fuller fantasies. (Fantasy. 7-9)
Pub Date: July 22, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-375-85587-0
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2008
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