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Mary Pope Osborne's Day of the Dragon King is a history adventure for 7 year olds about a brother and sister trying to save one book from a bonfire.
The tree house in the Frog Creek woods is full of books, and pointing at a picture in one of them is all it takes to be somewhere else.
This time Morgan le Fay sends them to ancient China with a strip of bamboo. The marks on it are the title of a legend, and they have to find the original writing of it before the Imperial Library is destroyed.
It is the second of four missions where the job is rescuing a story. The first one took them to Pompeii.
Almost the first thing that happens is a warning. A young cowherd asks them to carry a message, then looks horrified when Jack mentions the library. Beware of the Dragon King, he says. Whatever you do, beware.
The good part is how much Jack and Annie have to manage on their own wits. There is no sword and no spell. They hide in a grain cart. They keep their heads down under their hats. Annie gives away far too much and Jack keeps hissing at her to stop.
They do get help, from a silk weaver at the farmhouse and from a scholar hiding as a farmer. Both are drawn quickly and kindly. The scholar cries when he sees a paper book, because in his country books are bundles of bamboo strips and they are about to be burned.
The silk weaver tells them that anyone who steals the secret of silk will be arrested and put to death. Men are marched off under guard to build the Great Wall. Three hundred thousand workers are digging the emperor's tomb. Then soldiers start throwing books on a fire while the Dragon King watches.
None of it is shown in detail and nobody is hurt in front of the children. But a book burning is the centre of the plot, so a reader who worries about unfairness may need to talk about it afterwards.
That said, it is also the reason the story has more weight than the earlier ones. Annie shouting stop at a bonfire nobody can hear her over is a proper moment.
Pompeii is where the first of these four missions took them. That book is Vacation Under the Volcano, and it drops the same pair into an ancient city on the exact day the mountain goes off, with the same secret library cards in their pockets.
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