The Great Dragon Rescue

After being flown away by his dragon to a dark forest, George is told by Papa Dragon that his baby has been captured by a wicked witch and asks for his help in getting him back--resulting in George using all his wit and courage to come up with the perfect plan to fight the bad magic they will all soon have to face!

PreSchool-Grade 2 - Splendid watercolor art illustrates this ho-hum story. George has an unusual friend, a dragon, whom he aided in The Egg (Putnam, 2001). In this episode, he is inside a chicken coop collecting eggs when the dragon appears, lifts up the structure in its claws, and flies with it to a faraway land. They stop in a dark forest near a cottage, where a witch is holding a small dragon prisoner. The crone catches the bespectacled lad as he tries to free the captive, and quick thinking on his part leads to a flying race between witch and serpent. When the dragon wins and the witch's spell backfires, the tiny creature is set free. There's not much substance to the tepid tale and certainly not enough detail to warrant repeated readings. With colorful, well-imagined artwork, this book is nice to look at, but that's about it. - Maryann H. Owen, Racine Public Library, WI
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PreS-Gr. 1. In Robertson's The Egg (2001), a young boy, George, finds a dragon egg in a chicken coop. When the hatchling emerges, George trains it in the essential arts of fire breathing, damsel rescuing, and so on. This companion story finds George once again in the coop, where he is startled by the reappearance of his dragon friend, who returns in a rush, scoops up boy and coop, and flies off to "the land where everything began with Once upon a time." Upon alighting, the friends rescue a baby dragon from a wicked witch and discover a sweet surprise about the baby's parentage. The threads tying the story elements together are too slender; children unfamiliar with the first book may be particularly confused by the dragon's sudden appearance at the book's outset. But Robertson's watercolor illustrations are a delight, rendering the fairy-tale world's menacing, frog-eating witch; shimmering enchanted castle; and paunchy, sweet-tempered dragon in equally winsome detail. Gillian Engberg
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