Dragon Skin

Karen Foxlee's Dragon Skin is a quiet, heart-thumping adventure for 9 year olds about a girl who finds a dying baby dragon in a dry creek bed.

What happens

Pip is ten, and home is the last place she wants to be. She'd much rather sit by the creek's deep pool as the sun goes down, watching the galahs settle and thinking about her best friend Mika. Mika's been gone for months (although he still pipes up in her head with advice).

Then the last ray of sun catches something in the riverbed. It's the size of a kitten, its wings are torn to rags and it's barely breathing. It's a dragon.

What follows is a very hands-on sort of rescue. Pip raids the medicine drawer for an eye-dropper and a syringe. She feeds him sugary water three drops at a time, then mushed-up arrowroot biscuits in a hidden cave on the hill she and Mika used to call theirs. She names him Little Fella. Who wouldn't want to find one of those?

You can feel the heat of the little mining town on every page. Spinifex, red rock, Weet-Bix for breakfast and air conditioners humming outside every house. And Pip's worry is so real that you'll be holding your breath with her over every tiny swallow.

Worth knowing before you hand it over

Home isn't a happy place for Pip. Her mum's boyfriend Matt is the sort of person the whole house tiptoes around. Pip and her mum flinch when his tool bag crashes onto the bench, and he likes Pip shut in her room with the light off. Nothing violent happens in the opening chapters, but the fear is very real. Pip also skips school and lies to her mum to keep Little Fella secret.

So this one probably isn't for a child who'd find an unhappy, tense home upsetting. For a reader who's ready for a story with big feelings in it, Pip's stubborn, fierce love for her dragon is exactly what makes it so special.

What to read next

If they fall for Little Fella, Jeremy Thatcher, Dragon Hatcher is in the library too. Jeremy is the shortest boy in sixth grade, with a horrible art teacher and a class full of teasing. Then something he buys in a strange little magic shop cracks open on his desk in the middle of the night.