Read Dragon Girls 10 – Grace the Cove Dragon free for 7 days. £7.99/month after - less than a paperback.
Maddy Mara's Grace the Cove Dragon is a splashy Magic Forest adventure for 6 year olds about a very speedy swimmer who turns into a Sea Dragon.
Grace is at summer camp for kids who love the water. She's there for swimming, obviously. Her cabinmates are Zoe, who surfs, and Sofia, who dives.
One afternoon Grace swims out to the red buoy in the cove and hears a song coming from nowhere. When she comes up for air the beach is empty. The car park has turned into a forest and she's got aqua scales, horns and a tail!
A tiny talking fish called FinFin takes her to meet the Tree Queen. Zoe and Sofia are there too (as Sea Dragons, of course). Three Sea Keepers have gone missing, and without them a magic watch that keeps the seas in balance won't get wound. The Fire Queen hates water, so she's the obvious suspect.
This first quest is to find the leader of the Diamond Dolphins. The dolphins are SURE the Shiver Sharks took him. Then the girls actually meet the sharks, and it turns out they're the most scared creatures in the sea. They're vegetarian and they'd just love someone to come round for tea.
It's exciting in a gentle sort of way. The Fire Sparks sting and make your thoughts go all fuzzy, and the crabs in the rock tunnel are very snippy. But nothing stays scary for long, and FinFin pops up whenever Grace's nerves kick in.
Who wouldn't want to race a shark called Smiler? That race is probably the best bit. Grace ends up having to choose between winning and going back for a friend in trouble, which is a lovely one to chat about afterwards.
If your reader spends every holiday begging to get in the water, they'll recognise Grace straight away. She sings to herself while she swims and counts her strokes as she goes (one, two, three, breathe). She gets the jitters before a big race too, and she finds out how much easier things feel with friends cheering you on.
It's the tenth Dragon Girls book, but it starts a new set of three friends, so it's a perfectly good place to jump in.
If this one goes down well, go right back to Azmina the Gold Glitter Dragon, the very first Dragon Girls book. Azmina has just moved house, and the same forest song calls her over the back fence of her new garden.
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