The Little Bookroom

my father's dragon

I heard My Father’s Dragon before I could read it for myself, and indeed, with its short, episodic chapters, crisply drawn characters and naïve illustrations, it an ideal choice for a first chapter book. The plot is compelling: in return for his kindness in sheltering her, an old alley cat tells a boy by the name of Elmer Elevator how he might achieve his ambition to fly. In her travels, the cat tells Elmer, she once encountered a baby dragon, a beautiful creature with yellow and blue stripes, and golden wings. It had had the misfortune to fall from a cloud onto Wild Island, bruising a wing, and had henceforth become the miserable captive of the local inhabitants, condemned to fly them back and forth across the river that split the island almost in two. If the dragon could be rescued, then surely he would let Elmer fly on his back. But the island is populated only by animals—very wild animals. Elmer, unafraid, embarks upon a journey to rescue the baby dragon.

The exchanges of aid between cat and boy, boy and dragon, make sense to children concerned with fair treatment in relationships. So too does the necessity of the boy’s action; the adults of his acquaintance would never believe the cat’s story. Motivated by selfish desire and sincere compassion, the unflappable Elmer Elevator is an entirely believable hero. He makes his way through his adventure by the exercise of those attributes that define him as a child: his small size, his invisibility to those in power, his appreciation of a good joke, his sense of hope.

As a child, even more than the drama of the plot, I was compelled by the verisimilitude of this book. It was the map, I think, that convinced me of its truth. Long before I knew how to read it, I knew that the map on the endpapers showed a real place, a place that you could get to too, if you had the help of an old alley cat. The specificity of the writing also lent credence to the tale: the names of the islands, the numbers of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to be consumed, of bags of wheat to be delivered, and of tangerine peels to be concealed, and most importantly, the extraordinary contents of Elmer’s knapsack: “…chewing gum, two dozen pink lollipops, a package of rubber bands, black rubber boots, a compass, a tooth brush and a tube of tooth paste, six magnifying glasses, a very sharp jackknife, a comb and a hairbrush, seven hair ribbons of different colors, an empty grain bag with a label saying ‘Cranberry,’ some clean clothes, and enough food…” The plays on language entered into my private store of phrases to ponder. The image of a dormouse shaking its tiny fist at the sky, and shouting, “Bum cack! Bum cack! We dreed our nagon!,” was for years enough to reduce me to giggles.

The device of identifying the boy-hero as “my father,” drew the story most deeply into my consciousness, at the same time as it was puzzling. I can remember lying in my bed, the pillowcase warming and softening and wrinkling under my head, listening to my mother as she read, and wondering in a half-conscious way: whose father was Elmer Elevator? Her father, since she said the words, or my father, since I heard them? There were no other meaningful possibilities, since the narrator of the story is never named or otherwise identified. There were only the two of us, and the story, and the lamplight. But I knew that if such adventures had occurred to my father, surely they awaited me. Never before had I encountered a book that suggested that the border between stories and life was blade thin, and that with a map and a knapsack and a guide, you could go anywhere. I was particularly nice to cats afterwards.

There are two sequels, though neither is nearly as good as this. If you have children under six, find this book and read it with them. It will give them a taste of adventure and a sense of possibility. And if you can find an old edition, with the map in colors of sky blue and coral and sand on the endpapers, so much the better.         

thinking

The Dragon of Og. By Rumer Godden.  Illustrated by Pauline Baynes. New York: Viking Press, 1981.

An origin tale concerning a shy and lonely dragon confined to a small pool in the stretch of a river by his mother, and the new lord of the manor, who determines that the dragon shall no longer devour its customary pair of bullocks each month. The true protagonist is the lady of the manor, who transforms the rough castle and takes to walking in countryside. “Most people think when someone walks slowly, not talking, but feeling the wind, watching birds and flowers—at night, stars—he or she is being plain idle, whereas what they are doing is most important of all: thinking.” A slight story, but satisfying in its language, with lovely full-color plates that are indeed reminiscent of medieval manuscripts.

reluctant dragons

Kenneth Grahame’s The Reluctant Dragon. By Robert Sans Souci. New York: Orchard Books, 2004.

The Reluctant Dragon is a curious story. It was first published in Kenneth Grahame’s Dream Days (1898), a collection of autobiographical fictions, as a story told to himself and his sister as they were walked home by a man from the circus. Since then it has often been published alone, usually abridged or retold. In some ways this is unfortunate, as it seems to me to be a great loss to be without a dragon who expresses himself so resolutely on the subject of fighting with knights: “But the whole thing’s nonsense, and conventionality, and popular thick-headedness. There’s absolutely nothing to fight about, from beginning to end. And anyhow I’m not going to, so that settles it!” There is an arch tone that creeps into Grahame’s original that can be very condescending. Of the many reworkings of the tale, I prefer San Souci’s, which preserves the central ideas and feelings of the original—that there is a stupidity in violence and a rightness in convention which must be balanced, hopefully in such a way as to benefit all concerned. John Segal’s small color pictures bring the dragon to life without overpowering the text. That said, his illustrations do not accurately reflect the text, depicting the dragon as green rather than the clearly stated blue—so you might prefer the abridgement by Inga Moore (Cambridge, MA: Candlewick Press, 2004).

cowardly custard

Custard the Dragon and the Wicked Knight. By Ogden Nash. Illustrated by Lynn Munsinger. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1996.

Another reluctant dragon! This time, Belinda’s “realio, trulio little pet dragon” is forced into action by the wicked Sir Garagoyle, who snatches her from her home and chains her in his deep deep dungeon. But Nash’s rollicking rhythm and Munsinger’s bright cheerful illustration ensure that the tale is never frightening. This is a sequel to Nash’s equally delightful The Tale of Custard the Dragon.

saints and dragons

Saint George and the Dragon. By Margaret Hodges. Illustrated by Trina Schart Hyman. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1984.

A wonderful book for children drawn to lush, romantic tales. Hodges’ retelling of the legend is at once dramatic in its battle of good and evil, and folkloric in its emphasis on the healing powers of the land. But it is Hyman’s illustrations that really capture the reader’s imagination, not only the full page ones, but the marvelous borders of the text with their lovely indigenous plants and their symbolic representations of the progression of the tale in the figure of a tiny ship.

one of my most favorite books of all time

The Dragon of an Ordinary Family. By Margaret Mahy. Illustrated by Helen Oxenbury. New York: Dial Books for Young Readers, 1992.

The very ordinary Belsaki family—Mr. Belsaki, Mrs. Belsaki, and their son Orlando Belsaki--embark upon an extraordinary adventure when Mrs. Belsaki, in a fit of pique, calls her husband a fuddy-duddy because he boggles at her request that he buy Orlando a pet. He retaliates by purchasing the animal at the pet shop that is displayed beneath the sign “Unusual Pet--Very Cheap”: a small dragon. And the dragon grows and grows and grows, until the Belsakis are ordered by the mayor to remove it, or have it destroyed. But where can you take a dragon at the holidays? Fortunately, the dragon has a destination in mind. Helen Oxenbury’s suburban homes, with their stuffy interiors and tidy gardens, provide the perfect setting for the growing dragon. A more brilliant collaboration is hard to imagine. The Dragon of an Ordinary Family was first published in England in 1969, again in the U.S. in 1992, and is once again out of print—and I highly, highly recommend it! Beg, borrow or steal this book—well, really, get it on inter-library loan if you can’t get it any other way—but get it!

darkness and dragons

There’s a Dragon Downstairs. By Hilary McKay. Illustrated by Amanda Harvey. New York: Margaret K. McElderry Books, 2003.

Every night, tucked safe in bed, Sophie hears a dragon rattling in through the cat flap, slinking into the living room, growing and growing in the dark. Frightened, she goes to her parents’ room, and her mother sweetly and smilingly brings her downstairs to show her the utter absence of dragons. But Sophie continues to hear it at night. Her many efforts to frighten it away disguised as a knight, a firefighter and a princess likewise fail. But when she resolves to go downstairs as herself, she solves the mystery at the heart of her fear. Hilary McKay wonderfully describes the ways in which nighttime fears evaporate in daylight only to return at dusk, while Amanda Harvey’s soft watercolors reassure young listeners that everything will be alright long before the outcome of the story is clear.

here there be dragons

When the idea for Bookish began to take shape in my mind, I had a sudden vision of myself studying an old map emblazoned with the legend “Here be dragons”: an adventure ahead! And so I knew I’d have to seek out good books about dragons for this first issue. I'm adding some of those same books to The Little Bookroom.

                I chose not to include fairy tales and folk tales from the oral tradition, both because I had an obscure feeling that trying to examine those stories side-by-side with modern fiction would be awkward, and because I wondered how modern authors would deal with dragons.

Having spent the better part of the month reading about dragons, I can say that some curious patterns emerge. First, in the case of books for preschool children, dragons live in the time of knights and castles. These dragons are generally peaceable creatures, even cowardly ones, who are therefore roused to action only when necessary, and only on the side of justice. Sometimes they turn out not to exist at all, but to threaten only in the imaginations of children bold enough to confront their fears.

                In the case of books for children of about six and up, books featuring dragons are set either in the remote, mythical past or solidly in the present. Long-ago dragons are real creatures of flesh and blood, most of them large, fierce and dangerous. A handful are utterly uninterested in pursuing the chivalric life, and seek to preserve the public appearance of savagery only as a means of ensuring their greater privacy. In either case, these dragons draw communities together, allowing them to articulate their values to themselves, values of wit, loyalty or courage. Present-day dragons, by contrast, are invisible or in hiding or stranded in time. They need the help of children to return to safety or to sleep. These modern dragons typically represent hidden forces and feelings—anger, fear, insecurity—and children in these books are empowered to act authoritatively, since adults don’t even see the problem.

                To my surprise, the gender politics of books about dragons remain remarkably retrograde; if anything, the numbers and significance of girls and women in these stories have diminished over time. Among the best books for preschoolers are depictions of boy knights engaged in derring-do, who reconsider the wisdom of their actions or succumb to their very natural fears, and of girl princesses requiring rescue—though there is also a wonderfully brave girl who confronts her fears, in There’s a Dragon Downstairs. But at the early elementary level, I found literally not one book I liked that had a female protagonist. This lack tends to persist in books at the later elementary level, though not so absolutely, as here there are girls and women who use their wits to defeat both dragons and men—see The Dragon of Og. The books I found worthy of recommendation are truly all wonderful, but the absence of girls in these stories is extremely odd, to say the least, and all the more so as books about dragons for readers 11 and up feature girls prominently. So if you know readers of this age, you should certainly look for books by Patricia Wrede, Susan Fletcher, and Anne McCaffrey.

                Now, what interest do babies and toddlers have in these grand themes? None whatsoever! So the reviews for the youngest children focus on books that play with some of the issues at the heart of the modern dragon books for older children—namely, hiding and finding.

Pat the Bunny. By Dorothy Kunhardt. New York: Golden Books, 1940. You may already own this book, but if not, you must find it for your baby. Often the first book a child receives, Pat the Bunny is perfect for babies, who love to pat the soft bunny, to feel Daddy’s scratchy face, to play peek-a-boo with brother Paul, to read sister Judy’s book, to smell the flowers, to put their fingers in Mommy’s ring, to look at themselves in the mirror, and to wave bye-bye. It is a profoundly exciting reading experience for most babies of six months and up—peek-a-boo with Paul in particular is something they return to again and again. Unfortunately, the edition currently available has an excessively fragile binding that will not stand up to the eager readings of most children, so you may need to find a second copy along the way. If you read this as a young child, you’ll notice that the scent of the flowers has changed, too.