Rhyming couplets offer a diverse cast of child artists advice in Douglas Florian's (Poem Runs: Baseball Poems and Paintings) tongue-in-cheek picture book.
A child pulls a slumbering dragon, snoutfirst, through his neighborhood in a red wagon, as if it's the most natural thing in the world. "Drawing dragons isn't hard. Drag a dragon to your yard," says the accompanying text, which opens the book. A swirl of green paint indicates grassy rings around homes surrounded by picket fences, while gray and yellow pastels mark the sidewalks and roadways. Collage elements include a snail and peacock. The rhyming couplets continue in the next yard, belonging to a boy carrying a T-square, colored pencils and other tools ("Dragons may be large in size. You'll need lots of art supplies"). In the third scene, however, a pink dragon in a circle, like an overlarge napping kitten, rests on a rooftop as a child draws from a perch on the dragon's back ("Dragons, when they wake, are grumpy./ and their heads are rather bumpy"). Florian varies the color schemes and perspectives: a girl sketches within a dragon's mouth; a redheaded boy draws another's claw as the dragon, in turn, draws the boy. One girl holds an umbrella to deflect a dragon's sneeze, while another boy toasts marshmallows in a dragon's fire. Always, the children draw and sketch.
The culminating foldout spread delivers a lovely surprise that reinforce's art's ability to capture a moment for posterity. --Jennifer M. Brown, children's editor, Shelf Awareness