Sunday, October 7, 2012

Oscar and the Very Hungry Dragon

Do you like dragons? I don't know anybody who does not like them!  Children are especially fascinated by them and they never fail to pick up a book about dragons at each library trip we make.

This week we stumbled upon Oscar and the Very Hungry Dragon by Ute Krause.


It's starts like most dragon story, with an evil dragon who terrorizes a village and wants to eat the princess. But since the princess leaves in her car, the villagers decides to randomly pick one child to take her place: in this case our hero Oscar.

But little Oscar is very clever and finds a way to not get eaten... He tricks the dragon by telling him to fatten him up by letting him eat more.  He would then cooks all kind of delicious dishes and attempts to convince the dragon to try eating human food instead of humans.

This story shows a lot of similarities with the old fairy tale of Hansel and Gretel.  This detail was not lost on my boy who exclaimed : "That's what happened in Hansel and Gretel!" I was pleased that he remembered because I didn't recall him being very fond of any fairy tales so that was sure a surprise for me to see that he indeed remembered the story I read to him :P


All my nephews took turn reading the books and they loved it. A warning though: there is a "bad word" in the book and that's "SHUT UP".  When the kids came across that part, they gasped and ran to show it to me, saying "I can't believe they have a bad word in a book!"

Apart from that one flaw, the book is really just fun to read.  And the pictures are so cute. The oven, pots and pans, chairs, table and food look like miniature toys compared to the big dragon.  Since I am biased toward anything miniature, I was instantly won over!
  

No comments:

Post a Comment