Through the Looking Glass Children's Book Reviews
The dragons of Wayward Crescent: Gruffen
Fiction
For ages 7 to 9
Scholastic, 2009 ISBN: 0545168155
One night Lucy Pennykettle sees what she is convinced is a monster. She cannot go to sleep, and her mother Liz cannot persuade Lucy that there are no monsters outside her window or inside her room. The next day Liz does what she does best, she makes a clay dragon. This dragon will be for Lucy, and it will be a guard dragon. Before the little figurine is fired in the kiln, Liz and Lucy put a little piece of a magic snowball on the dragon’s snout.
Several days late, after being fired in the kiln, the figurine is ready. Liz says “Hrrr” to the dragon (a word every self respecting dragon knows) and he wakes up with a puff of smoke.
The first thing that Liz and Lucy do is to give the dragon a name. Actually, he comes up with his own name, Gruffen. Then Gruffen sets about learning a little about the world around him. He discovers that he job is to guard Lucy. What none of them expects, is that Gruffen finds that something really is flying around outside Lucy’s bedroom window at night.
In this delightful first book in a new series, Chris D’Lacey introduces his readers to a very unique family. Young readers who think that it would be wonderful to have their own little dragon, will immediately fall in love with young Gruffen, who has so much to learn, but who still manages to do the job that he was made to do. What is going to happen next in Lucy’s house? Will her mother make her another dragon? Will Gruffen guard her from other perils?
