A. J. Lake's The Coming of Dragons is the newest entry in a bushelful of books designed to fill kids' seemingly insatiable desire for stories about dragons. In most of these books, the dragons are heroic beings, but in Lake's newest, Torment the Dragon is a nasty piece of work. In the first pages of this ripping yarn, the Spearwa, the dragon destroys a sailing vessel and all hands, except two passengers, Edmund, a king's song, and Elspeth, the skipper's daughter. Both are saved by clinging to an chest from the cargo hold, and then by an old, Gandalf-like mentor named Aagard, who takes them into his home when they wash ashore. Edmund and Elspeth are soon discovered to have stunning--and inconvenient--gifts. Edmund is a Ripente, one who can see through others' eyes, and Elspeth becomes the guardian and wielder of a silver sword which comes to her unbidden from the chest. Many scary and sometimes violent adventures follow, asthe two children desperately try to get back home. The Coming of Dragons is a tad bit uneven, with a few patches of clunky writing and some egregious proofreading mistakes, but the whole book is greater than the sum of its parts. Kids should love it, and the ending is such a cliffhanger that Lake should scarcely have been allowed to release the first book before the second one was written. (This is Book One in the Darkest Age series.) Parents should be warned that there is a short scene of torture towards the end of the book that may be too intense for younger children.
The Mixed-Up Owl Written by Marzena Sowa Illustrated by Joanna Lorno New York : Hippo Park, 2025. Picture Book. When Owl can't sleep at night, he heads off to see if any forest animals can help him understand why, and even more so, how to fix it! Unfortunately, all the animals Owl runs into at night are asleep and all the animals he meets during the day are too rude or too busy to answer him. Will Owl give up or will a chance meeting with a grumpy hedgehog provide all the solutions Owl was looking for? The premise of an owl trying to stay awake during the day because all the other animals around him do is very fun. Kids who know that owls are nocturnal will get a kick out of Owl's confusion and be quick to try to tell him what's going on. Readers who don't know many facts about owls (or nocturnal animals in general) will get a brief introduction to the different ways animals sleep. The illustrations are charming, especially cute Owl and his expressive body langua...
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