The Imaginary Veterinary 3 – The Rain Dragon Rescue

Suzanne Selfors's The Rain Dragon Rescue is a cosy small-town fantasy for 7 year olds about a secret hospital for creatures that aren't supposed to exist.

What happens

Ben Silverstein is spending the summer with his grandfather in Buttonville, a sleepy town where the button factory closed years ago and most people are older than Grandpa Abe. There's no pool, no computer and no television.

There is, however, a dragon reaching through the kitchen window at two in the morning.

Ben watches it from the bedroom doorway, pressed against the wall, while it pushes past the bagels and the paper towels, unplugs the toaster and takes it. Then it gallops across the lawn and flies off with the moonlight bouncing off its stolen breakfast appliance.

By morning half of Buttonville has lost something. A garbage can. A mailbox. A spatula. A favourite fork. All metal, every one of them, and the town's busiest busybody has called an emergency meeting about the thief in their midst.

Ben can't say a word, because he and his friend Pearl are apprentices at Dr Woo's Worm Hospital, which is not a worm hospital at all, and they've signed a contract of secrecy.

The whole thing is very warm and very funny. Grandpa Abe's kitchen is sticky, his breakfast is basically sugar, and his idea of a busy week is bingo on Monday and pudding on Saturday. Ben, who describes himself as cautious rather than brave, keeps inventing elaborate excuses and getting caught out (his hamster had a nightmare and needs supervising, apparently).

It's the sort of book where the jokes are gentle and the danger never gets properly dangerous. Nobody is hurt and the scariest thing in the opening is a cat who won't give up a dragon scale. If you've got a reader who likes the idea of dragons more than the fighting of them, this sits in exactly the right place.

One thing to flag. This is the third book about Ben and Pearl, and the first two aren't in the library. It explains itself as it goes, so a new reader can manage, but you may get asked where the others are.

What to read next

If it goes down well, The Order of the Unicorn carries straight on, with a poacher spotted in the Imaginary World and his eye on anything with a horn.