Enchanted Forest Chronicles 1 – Dealing with Dragons

Patricia C. Wrede's Dealing with Dragons is a fairy-tale comedy for 10 year olds, and its heroine would much rather work for a dragon than marry a prince.

What happens

Cimorene is the seventh daughter and none of it suits her. She is too tall, her hair is the wrong colour, and she keeps asking why.

Every time she finds something she enjoys, somebody stops it. Fencing is not proper. Magic is not proper. Neither is Latin, cooking, economics or juggling. Each lesson ends the same way, with a parent saying it simply is not done and Cimorene asking, reasonably, why not.

Then her parents arrange her marriage to a handsome prince from the next kingdom who can talk about nothing except tournaments and gets half of that wrong. Cimorene asks him to call it off. He explains that princes do not do that sort of thing, and goes back to looking at swords.

So she takes advice from a frog in the garden, walks out of the castle, follows a set of very odd directions and knocks on the door of a hovel.

Inside is a cave full of dragons, arguing about whether to eat her.

What she does next is the whole joy of the book. Cimorene does not scream and she does not fight. She works out what dragons actually want, which is a princess to cook and organise for them, and offers to take the job.

One oddity to mention. Cimorene is sixteen and the trouble she is running from is an arranged marriage, so the heroine sits a good way above the shelf your reader is on. The writing does not. The sentences are short, the jokes are broad, the dragons sneeze fireballs and demand handkerchiefs. A 10 year old will follow every word. They are simply reading about someone older, which most children rather enjoy.

The humour is dry and deadpan, and it is aimed at anyone who has ever noticed that fairy tales make no sense. Knights polish armour purely for show. There is an accepted amount of screaming when a giant carries you off, and a governess to teach it. Nobody in this book finds any of that strange except Cimorene.

If you have a reader who argues back, who wants to know why a rule is a rule, they will recognise her immediately.

What to read next

Another one worth trying afterwards is Dragonskin Slippers. Creel is handed to a dragon by an aunt who is hoping a knight will turn up and marry into the family, and she gets out of it much the same way Cimorene does, by having a sensible conversation with the dragon.