Book Review: What Good Is A Dragon by Patrick Carlson

 What Good Is A Dragon?

by 

Patrick Carlson

Children's

Kindle edition/ 32 pages

I received a copy of this book from the author to read and give an honest review.

Thank you, Patrick Carlson(Goodreads author link)

From the cover:

It's the queen's birthday and Alexander must deliver a dragon before the party starts. What does the queen need with a baby dragon? Come with Alexander while he travels across the kingdom to deliver this special gift...and discover what good a dragon is!

My Review:

When receiving this book, my first impression was, Wow! The illustrations are wonderful!

I'm definitely a visual person, as well as a mom. I believe a great children's book must have eye-catching pictures to pull kids into the story. This book definitely hit the mark. Throughout the book, the pictures are vibrant, and seem to pop right off the pages!

The story tells of Alexander's travels through the kingdom and all the creatures he meets along the way. Each of them believe they have an even better gift for the queen than the baby dragon he is sent to deliver. Alexander never questions taking along each gift to be delivered. But, when he arrives to give them all to the queen, which gift will she be most excited about?

I love the message this story gives that even with the best of intentions, others may not know exactly what we need or want at that moment, and not everyone seeks beauty and power. I feel it also shows that just because something isn't important or special to one, doesn't mean that for everyone.

I actually read this book twice. Once alone and then again aloud to my 8-year-old daughter.

Ele:

She agreed the pictures were her favorite, and the story was well liked. Her takeaway from this was, a bit different from mine, but I love that she formed her own opinion and found something that I missed.

*spoiler*

She thought when the queen received all the gifts, and seemed to only notice the baby dragon, that she should have been happy with all her gifts.

Sometimes we focus so much on that one thing we need or want, we forget about all the other gifts we've received.

Is my 8-year-old wiser than me???

We decided to give this book 4 stars. I do wish the ending had maybe been a little clearer for younger readers. It does give you the reason, in pictures, but then just kind of trails off. 

Ele wanted to see pictures of the queen's birthday party.

Again, thank you, Patrick Carlson for this wonderful opportunity to read and review this book.

 If anyone would like to get a copy of this book, here is the Amazon link(no affiliate):

What Good Is A Dragon?

Happy Reading!