My Father’s Dragon

Ruth Stiles Gannett's My Father's Dragon is a gentle, very funny rescue story for 7 year olds, with a stowaway, a roped-up dragon and a truly enormous number of tangerines.

What happens

A boy called Elmer Elevator brings home a soaking wet alley cat. His mother is furious, so Elmer sneaks out later, finds the cat again, and the two of them go for a walk in the park.

He tells her he wants to fly. She says she knows where there is something better than an aeroplane.

On Wild Island, she says, a baby dragon fell out of a low cloud and hurt his wing. The animals there roped him by the neck and made him ferry them back and forth across the river. They work him day and night and twist his wings when he complains. His only friends are the crocodiles, who say hello once a week if they remember.

So Elmer packs.

The packing list is the moment most children fall for this book. Chewing gum, two dozen pink lollipops, rubber bands, black rubber boots, a compass, six magnifying glasses, a comb and hairbrush, seven hair ribbons in different colours, and twenty-five peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, because that is what a boy thinks a voyage needs.

He hides in a grain sack. He is unloaded off the ship as one bag of dried corn on the cob. Then he walks a line of slippery rocks out to Wild Island for seven hours in the dark, and starts meeting the locals.

The jungle here runs on bureaucracy and bad temper, which is what makes it so funny. Two wild boars solemnly review the three signs of a recent invasion. A mouse muddles its words and hurries off to smell tumduddy. Two tortoises in the dark assume Elmer is a monkey taking his sick grandmother to the doctor, and Elmer agrees, because what else can you say.

It is a lovely shape for reading aloud. Short chapters, a map building in your head, and a boy who solves things with the contents of a knapsack rather than by being brave.

Two things to flag, both in the first few pages and both over quickly. Elmer's mother whips him. The captive dragon is beaten and tied up. Neither is dwelt on, and the cruelty is the reason for the whole journey, but it is there in plain words.

What to read next

When they finish this one, Elmer and the Dragon is waiting for them here. There is a storm out over open water, a tiny green island with pine trees planted in rows and an orchard long gone wild, and a canary who already knows the name of the boy who has just landed on it.