Every Wednesday, my kids and I go to the local library. Every Wednesday my daughter heads straight for the Fairy Tales/Folk Tales/Mythology bays of the children’s section. She scans the spines of hundreds of books filled with beautiful princesses, ancient kings, gods of all shapes and sizes, and mythical creatures galore.
She has her favorites. Cinderella, of course, and Beauty and the Beast (particularly Jan Brett’s delightful version with its multiple visual subplots), and Rapunzel.
But she also has an appetite for dragons. Earlier this month, she came home with half a dozen dragon tales. Our family’s favorite is St. George and the Dragon, written in perfect prose by Margaret Hodges. Her story is based on Spenser’s tale of the Redcrosse Knight in The Faerie Queene and even includes snippets of Spenser’s poetry. Trina Schart Hyman won a much-deserved Caldecott for her lush and gorgeous illustrations. I can’t count how many times our family has checked this book out. I need to break down and just buy a copy.
One of my favorite stories about this particular book…
Read the rest (including a list of some of our family’s favorite dragon books) over at Tweetspeak Poetry, where they’re pondering dragons and other mythical beasts this month.
Photo by Sprague Minger.
