BOOK REVIEW

by Papa

Title: Dragon Rider

Author: Cornelia Funke

Recommended Age: 6-8

Pages: 523

Read-Aloud Time: About 2 months

Rating: 3/10

Dragon Rider is a story set in the modern world about a dragon who needs to find a new place for his species to live.  He leaves his home with a creature called a brownie and gradually picks up a cast of characters along the way to help him in his quest.  A boy named Ben becomes his most crucial companion to make his journey successful.  There's a villain, however, who wants to hunt all the dragons, and he has many helpers himself.

Dragon Rider just never really had me anxious to find out what would happen, as any book should.  The characters just didn't seem very likable.  Personally, I just can't get past books with talking animals.  If it were just the magical creatures that did the talking, it might not have been that bad, but there were talking mice and they talked to Ben and he didn't seem very surprised about it.  In the span of a few weeks, this boy comes in contact with a dragon, a brownie, a homunculus, a dwarf, a basilisk, a djinn, a sea serpent, and faeries and he seems to take it perfectly in stride.  The book tries to explain it by saying that magical creatures attract other magical creatures, but I just thought it was forced.

Favorite Thing: The one running joke in the book is that a someone can't get the word "homunculus" right and they wind of saying all sorts of different variations.

Least Favorite Thing: Talking mice.

Questionable Material for Kids: The book is pretty tame, but I don't like the fact that characters said "Shut up!" even the villain.  We never say that around our household and instead, I would read it as "Quiet!"