July 2009, Bloomsbury
32 pages
Review copy
There is no doubt that the cover drew me to request this book. The dragon is cute, and the other animals (especially the bunny and the seal) share that 'awww' factor.
The Trouble with Dragons is a story about climate change, exchanging humans for dragons, providing a straightforward message for children about how to care for our planet. Debi's illustrations are vibrant and colourful. Most pages have what looks like a watercolour type background. I seem to notice that where the dragons are living in not quite the best manner the colour scheme is muted and emphasizes the bad deeds. Then there are the dragons themselves, who being the stars of the book are rather large and prominent in their bright coloured skins. My favourite dragons were the one listening to an mp3 player, and the baby dragon perching on top of it's parent as they sow some seeds.
Initially the animals are rather small and in the background as the dragons carry on with their destructive habits. At one point when the future looks grim there's a double page animal spread, and they are extremelly large when they give advice to the dragons. I liked spotting the animals in the dragon dominated pictures, because they look unhappy and are escaping misfortune: not only this, but until they give advice the animals are silouhettes. This is an accurate depiction of how animals can be viewed by some - a background creature not worth worrying about.
The end few pages which show the improvements made by the dragons are bright and cheery in both nature and colour scheme. I think it'll reassure children that they can easily do things to protect the planet, and will hopefully encourage their friends and families to do the same.
The next book by Debi Gliori, Stormy Weather is out in October. I've just received a copy and will review it shortly.
Find out more about Debi Gliori here.
And something I had forgotten: Debi Gliori is the author of Pure Dead Magic! No wonder the name sounded familiar!
New feature:
From now on I'll put the ISBN and where the book can be found on Amazon and Borders. For customers on both sides of the Atlantic I've included the uk and .com sites.
ISBN 978-0-7475-9541-0
Buy from Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.com
Buy from Borders.uk, Borders.com
2 comments:
Thank you very much for the US amazon link :-)
You're welome - this is a feature I no longer do, but until I tackle older posts it will stay ^o^
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