Egg-cellent Book Bonus! There's a Dragon in Your Book by Tom Fletcher

LOOK! THERE'S AN EGG IN YOUR BOOK!

That's a NOVEL surprise!...

But as we know, an egg doesn't stay an egg

It's cracking and ... hatching out a baby dragon--an adorable baby dragon!

TICKLE HER LITTLE NOSE!

A-CHOOO!

OOPS! There's one thing we didn't know. When baby dragons sneeze, they make little sparks fly all over. We have to blow out the little fires and hurry and turn the page!

But when the page is turned, there are little fires there on both pages. And when we turn that page to tamp down the fire, there's smoke escaping under that page.

LET'S USE IMAGINATION. IMAGINE A BIG WATER BALLOON, READY TO POP!

You DID it!

SPLASH!

The little dragon does a great job! The fire is out! Now, how about imagining up a giant ice cream cone for her reward? YUM! But that huge double decker leaves the little dragon sleepy and too full to fly! Oh, NO! How will she get back home?

Where there's a will, there's a way, in Tom Fletcher's latest in the Who's In Your Book? series, There's a Dragon in Your Book (Random House, 2018), another interactive story book with, thanks to artist Greg Abbott, the cutest baby hatchling dragon ever! Set in spot-art style in large figures and colorful text against bright white pages, this book is a cheery imagination workout for toddlers and an easy and fun book for emergent readers as well. For more fanciful brain workouts, see other books in this interactive book series, There's an Alien in Your Book (Who's In Your Book?), and There's a Monster in Your Book (Who's In Your Book?) (see my review here.)

Shadows Rising! Gloom Town by Ronald L. Smith

The town was called Gloom, which was a strange name for a town. Some said that sailors gave it the name long ago when they pulled their ships into the harbor only to be met by wind, rain, and very little sunlight.

In the midst of all this gloom there lived a boy named Rory.

Rory is too old for school and too young for a real job, but when he and his hard-working mother are threatened by the cruel Mr. Bumbailiff with the loss of their tiny house, Rory goes out into the fog to find a job to earn the rent to keep the roof over their heads. When he sees an ad for a "gentleman's valet at Foxglove Manor," he applies, even though he has no idea what a valet is.

But at Foxglove Manor, a valet does everything, all the dirty work, as well as fetching and carrying for the frightful Lord Foxglove. Still, Rory knows he must help his mother save their home, so he signs the contract, noticing as he does an inscription in fanciful script below the line for his name.

Upon Penalty of Death

It's a horrible job, but then Rory discovers that his master is a vicious shape-shifting necromancer who serves a blood-lusting goddess of evil, murmuring "I thirst. I hunger."

She is the Destroyer, Queen of Sorrow.

And only Rory, with his best friend Isabelle, a witch herself, have the knowledge and courage to save themselves and those they love... if they can.

In a time past but not yet distant, in a drear and dismal town where visiting ships stay in the harbour no longer than they must, a dark and nefarious sorcerer threatens all, even stealing the children's very shadows. Rory and Izzy, with a little help from her friends, must screw their courage to the sticking point and save their town and their people, in Ronald L. Smith's latest fantasy, Gloom Town (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Clarion, 2020), a tale told of a town than is indeed benighted by its own miasma. Middle reader fans of Ronald Smith's Coretta Scott King Award-winning Hoodoo (see my 2015 review here), will want to get their hands on this atmospheric adventure novel.

In the Deep: Song of the Abyss (Tower of Winds 2) by Makiia Lucier

They came in the night as she dreamt, in her berth, in a ship sailing home to del Mar. Two carracks, painted Scorpion black. No emblem flying to hint at a kingdom of origin.

"Quiet!" Gunnel ordered. She wore her sword. "Up, up, quickly, Reyna!

Sea raiders!"

To the sound of sound of soft humming, the crewmen lie still, as if somehow enchanted, while the guttural sound of a vaguely familiar language is heard, ordering the crew of pirates looting the ship. As a map maker, Reyna knows she must save the charts of trading routes, the lifeblood of the kingdom of del Mar. With them safe in a water-tight quiver, she goes overboard and swims through the monster-filled sea until she reaches an island, a land which she recognizes as Lunes, one for which she has learned the language, but still strange and seemingly undergoing a crisis, with no torches or signs of activity, but where she hopes to find a del Marian trading ship to take her home.

As the rising sun shows her a landing, she sees the dark figure of a young man slumped, as if in grief.

In Lunesian, in a voice that rolled deep and pleasant in the dark, "Between the two of us, I wonder who's had the worst night of it!"

He tells her that he is Levi, a son of the King who has just died.

Reyna vanishes into the dawn, but later, she meets up with him again. He is the second son of the king, and when Reyna's ship is towed into the harbor with its dead, the two of them find themselves assigned the task of finding his older brother and locating the mysterious raiders before they strike again.

With Reyna's navigational knowledge and Levi's knowledge of sailing ships, they sail out from Lunes into the Sea of Magdalen and through the Strait of Cain, with its maelstrom filled with drowned but undead souls, and trace their pirates to the distant land of Miramar, a secretive and xenophobic people with exquisite etiquette and with the barbaric custom of tutto mortise, burying their ruler with his chosen retainers. It is to this land that the mysterious raiders belong, inexplicitly swapping their stolen booty for shiploads of Lunesian clay. In managing to stay alive and discover the unthinkable logic behind the piracy, Reyna and Levi find themselves falling in love.

In her Song of the Abyss (Tower of Winds) (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2019), author Makiia Lucier fashions an compelling fantasy romance within an extravagantly imagined world drawn from the Mediterranean society of the early Enlightenment period. Del Mar resembles Portugal in the days of Henry the Navigator, and Lunes is reminiscent of the Venice of Marco Polo, while Miramar suggest a rigid, ingrown Asian empire. Within this exotic setting, Lucier tells the intrigue-filled story of two strong-minded, star-crossed, but chaste lovers whose love and loyalty grow during their own odyssey through their world. The sequel to Lucier's Isle of Blood and Stone (Tower of Winds), this title sets the roles of the characters for the last book of the trilogy, perfect for knowledgeable young adult readers with promise for those who crave a bit of sophistication, an amalgamation of familiar cultures with fantasy, in their romance novels.

Stormy Weather!: Uni the Unicorn and the Dream Come True by Amy Krouse Rosenthal

It had rained and rained and rained in the land of the Unicorns, which meant there hadn't been any sunshine, which meant there hadn't been any rainbows, which meant there hadn't been any magic for what seemed like forever.

And unicorns gotta have magic. Everybody knows that.

All the unicorns have got the blues. Their horns droop. Their sparkle is fading. Something must be done!

But luckily there was one little unicorn who believed that little girls were real.

Uni the Unicorn believes in little girls and knows that somewhere, far, far away, there is that little girl who believes in unicorns. And at that moment that little girl is watching the rain and thunder and she knows, she just knows, that where there is rain and thunder, there may be...

A RAINBOW!

And following that rainbow down, down, down, the little girl and Uni the Unicorn find each other. The sad unicorns, huddled under umbrellas, see them sliding down the double rainbow together.

At last they discovered what Uni had known all along.

Little girls are REAL!

Sunshine returns with the rainbows and so does magic in the Land of the Unicorns, in Amy Krouse Rosenthal's second Uni story, Uni the Unicorn and the Dream Come True (Random House, 2017) in a clap-your-hands-if-you-believe-in-magic ending that Tinkerbell would have loved. Little girls and unicorns have a special thing going, and here author Rosenthal offers the literary magic, while illustrator Brigitte Barrager provides the sunny palette and fantastic sparkle to return all the unicorns to their proper magical state. "A sweet story for anyone who needs to find a little sunshine and sparkle," says Kirkus Reviews, and a treat for fans of Rosenthal's top-selling first book, Uni the Unicorn.