Synopsis
From the makers of Dragons: A Pop-Up Book of Fantastic Adventures comes another delightful pop-up adventure.
Long ago, dragons were the rulers of the sky. In this pop-up treat, the history of the dragon is explored in five inventive and imaginative pop-up pages. What do dragons like? What do they eat? How have they behaved across the centuries? These questions and more find surprising answers in vibrant pop-up scenes. Dramatically presented with dynamic paper engineering, these magnificent dragons fly out as you turn the pages.
Children's Literature
The production team for this book managed to prepare it without ever using the words imaginary or mythical, even when pertaining to the flame throwing or fire breathing dragons. They approach dragons as if their subject were dinosaurs or giraffes. About Chinese dragons they report, "Hatched from brilliantly colored eggs, they were water snakes for 500 years. By age 1,000 they had fish-like scales. After 1500 years, they had developed legs. From 1,500 to 2,000 they grew antlers. After 2,000 years, they shed their scales. By age 3,000 they had grown wings and changed no more." These dragons lived to be 4,000 years old. Only the Eastern dragons were kind to humans. They are credited with teaching humans how to write. Other dragons hoarded treasure, stabbed their prey with their tails, had such poisonous sweat and urine, one drop of which would rot a hunter's skin to the bone, and one dragon could spit poison up to 20 feet. Records and descriptions of dragons are said to be found in Africa, the Middle East, and the Americas. All facts aside, this book has a lift-the-flap egg that opens to reveal a small blue dragon, three double-page spreads with pop-up dragons, and a triple page, fold-out dragon skeleton 36" long! The cover is gold, blue, and red featuring an illustration of a golden Chinese dragon with antlers. Reviewer: Eleanor Heldrich