Duffy the Christmassy Dragon
by Kate Noble
illustrated by Kara Olson
Date: 2007
Publisher: BooksGoSocial
Reading level: C
Book type: picture book
Pages: 24
Format: e-book
Source: NetGalley
Beautiful, unique rhyming verse Christmas story, suitable for 3-8 year olds. Duffy The Dragon helps Santa one icy Christmas Eve. 24 pages - fully illustrated. A lovely gift and fun to read.
(synopsis from Goodreads)
This book has been around for over a decade. It's obviously being released again. And a re-release would've been the perfect time to give the text a polish. Sadly, that opportunity wasn't taken.
Duffy appears to be the pet dragon of a king. On Christmas Eve, the king is away visiting an aunt, leaving Duffy with his friends in the castle. Santa Claus ends up slipping on all the icy roofs, and he needs Duffy's help to melt the snow with his dragon breath. The dragon helps, and Christmas is saved.
And what does Duffy get for his troubles after all of that? A photo of himself. Way to cheap out, Santa. (Aren't dragons supposed to be fond of... well, "stuff"?)
The whole book is written in rhyming verse. The meter isn't great, but I've seen worse. (Oops... Sorry about that inadvertent poem there.) The problem is the writing. The punctuation is off. Capitalization is inconsistent. There are made-up words that I can't figure out (like "wooping"... which may just be a misspelling of "swooping"). The continual use of "reindeers" as a plural is just annoying.
Overall, this is a fairly weak Christmas story. Kids might like it if they're big fans of dragons, though.
Thank you to NetGalley and BooksGoSocial for providing a digital ARC.
Premise: 2/5
Meter: 3/5
Writing: 2/5
Illustrations: 2/5
Originality: 3/5
Enjoyment: 1/5
Overall: 2 out of 5
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