My Father's Dragon by Ruth Stiles GannettAwards: Newbery Honor (1949); Book Sense Book of the Year Award/Honorees
Series: 1 of 3
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I was hanging out in Borders on Friday morning with my husband and I noticed this book in the $3.99 pile. My husband was taking his sweet time, so I sat down and started to read this one, not realizing I might actually finish it.
Elmer Elevator is a small boy who yearns to fly. A stray cat tells him that he could fly if he went to the Wild Island to rescue a baby dragon. No explorer has ever returned alive from Wild Island, but Elmer uses lollipops, hair bows, and rubber bands to escape the threatening boars, crocodiles, and lions in order to save the dragon.
This is a cute fable-type story that kids would enjoy with fun illustrations. I'm not really sure what age to recommend it for. It's actually written on a 5th grade (Accelerated Reader) level, but the story is way too young for that. It seems like it would work best as a read-aloud, but it's definitely dated. In the end, I have to say that while I liked it in a quirky kind of way, I didn't end up thinking it was worth owning.
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Book 35 of 100 for the 100+ Reading Challenge, Book 20 of 25 for the MG Reading Challenge, Book 22 of 50 for the New Author Challenge
Source: Read it while waiting for my husband in the bookstore
5 comments:
That book is very familiar to me, but I'm not sure why - if I read it, I don't remember anything about it. I imagine kids were much less sophisticated in 1949, so maybe it was at the 5th grade level back then.
We listened to all three(two?) of them on a car trip a few years ago. The 5 and 7 year old really enjoyed the story, and the 3 year old mostly listened.
I read it aloud to my second graders and they Loved! it.
This is a great book that's best for reading out loud to younger kids. I read all three to my kids a long time ago, and I remember they liked them. It's purely a child's world, which they deserve every once in a while, since it seems a lot of books these days want them to grow up too fast.
My second grader is reading it independently for the third time. He loves it!
Really, do you think it is written at a fifth grade level?
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