The Boy Who Sang with Dragons

Andy Shepherd's The Boy Who Sang with Dragons is a funny, big-hearted adventure for 8 year olds about a dragon grower whose best friends are moving to the other side of the world.

What happens

Tomas has been growing dragons for a while now. He's even got a list of the skills you need (keep your eyes WIDE open, and be very quick at stamping out sparks). His little dragon Zing is a sky-blue lightning dragon who crackles when he's excited and fries a TV camera at one point.

It opens with a gang of badly behaved hatchlings loose on the cricket pitch at dusk. One oozes super-sticky slime. Two are drilling holes in the grass. Somebody ends up wedged bottom first in a collapsed tunnel. It's brilliant, messy fun.

Then things go quieter. Kat and Kai, the twins, are moving to China, and the goodbye in their empty bedroom is really touching. Lolli sends a painting of their dragons done in jam (of course she does).

Tomas's new friend Aura is at the centre of this one. She has her own little dragon called Rosebud, she loves the same dragon stories he does, and she feels oddly at home in his grandparents' kitchen. Why? That's the secret this book turns on, and the moment Tomas works it out is gloriously over the top. No spoilers here!

There's also a race to save the dragon-fruit seedlings, which keep dying on Tomas, and a friendly botanist whose greenhouse is growing some too. Mum's radio show turns into live TV with a Shetland pony in the lounge. It's exactly as chaotic as it sounds.

This one comes late in Tomas's story and builds on everything before it. If your reader hasn't met him yet, start with The Boy Who Grew Dragons and work up to this.

What to read next

If they're already hooked and fancy a different kind of dragon story, try Tomas and Ironskin, where a blacksmith's boy called Tom sees a dragon's face staring out at him from the forge fire.