There’s a Dragon in my Backpack!

Tom Nicoll's There's a Dragon in my Backpack is a very silly school story for 7 year olds about a boy smuggling a tiny talking dragon into class.

What happens

Pan is a Mini-Dragon, about fifteen centimetres tall, green and scaly with fiery breath and LOTS to say. He's been living secretly with Eric ever since he turned up in a carton of beansprouts from the local Chinese takeaway. This is the second book about them, so Pan has already arrived.

Pan's bored stiff at home, so Eric agrees to take him to school in his backpack. The deal is he stays quiet and out of sight. How hard can it be? Pan is soon loose in the classroom, and the teacher, Miss Biggs, is after him with a cricket bat called Doris. (She thinks he's a rat.)

Then it gets worse. Toby from next door is desperate for something amazing for Show and Tell at his posh school. He swaps his identical backpack for Eric's. Now Pan is across town at the La-Di-Da, and Eric, Min and Jayden have to get him back before Toby's turn comes.

Eric narrates it all in a cheerful, eye-rolling voice that little listeners will love. Pan insists Mini-Dragons are "excellent" at everything (except acting innocent). Min is the calm, clever one. Jayden is a truly terrible liar.

There's some sweet kindness in the chaos, too. Eric owns up to the missing jug of water himself so his friends won't get into trouble. And a little girl whose fishing rod gets booed off the Show and Tell stage turns out to be exactly who they need.

For newer readers it works best as a read-aloud, and the laughs keep coming. Pan eats the polystyrene bits off an art project thinking they're prawn crackers, then burps fire all over Eric's drawings. What small child won't find that funny?

What to read next

If they want to see how Pan first turned up, go back to There's a Dragon in my Dinner, where Eric opens a free box of beansprouts and finds something small, green and scaly inside.