Edith Nesbit

The Book of Dragons Edith Nesbit

The Book of Dragons The book contains eight stories featuring youngsters and dragons who come to cross purposes and clash. To paraphrase what used to be written in the unexplored areas of ancient maps, Here There Be Dragons: a red dragon who escapes from a book, a purple dragon who changes life forever in Rotundia, a plague of green dragons with yellow wings, a dragon made of ice, an old white dragon with a beard, a rust-red armored dragon with a furry secret, a shining fiery dragon, and a huge yellow dragon. Competing against the various dragons were such clever children as Edmund (he is a boy who likes to find things out, which is not the same as learning things), Lionel (who really should never have opened that lovely book he found), and more than one Princess: Mary Ann (who loved her little pet rhinos, but most especially loved her tiny elephant), and Sabrinetta (who had a heart of gold). Nesbit writes many vivid, humorous, striking, or beautiful similes. One dragon's "claws were as long as lessons and as sharp as bayonets." Another dragon cries with rage "like twenty engines all letting off steam at the top of their voices inside Cannon Street Station." The Northern Lights look like "as if the fairies were planting little shining baby poplar trees and watering them with liquid light." And "when the Dragon saw them start, he turned and flew after them, with his great wings flapping like clouds at sunset, and the Hippogriff's wide wings were snowy as clouds at moonrise." The stories in The Book of Dragons are rarely scary, occasionally moving, often beautiful, and always witty. Children and adults should enjoy them.