Book of the Week (30): “Tell Me a Dragon” by Jackie Morris

I want a dragon! I want one! And trust me, you will too. Each of the people in this glowingly beautiful book has a dragon of his or her own. And each dragon is different, depending on their person and depending on the world in which they live. There are dragons for skyscapes and seascapes, dragons from cityscapes and fairytale-princess landscapes, there are dragons in worlds of fire and worlds of ice. Though only 14 pictures – including front and back endpapers – and under 180 words long (slightly shorter, in other words, than this paragraph), I nonetheless spent a good half-hour on my first reading of this book, marvelling with slow relish at Jackie Morris’s colours and the vividness of her rich imagination, exploring the perspectives and the scales (in a proportional, as well as a dragon-skinned sense), alighting on delightful details, looking into her wonderful creatures’ reptile eyes. Tell Me a Dragon shows you what picture books can be at their most elegant and lyrical – if you can’t get a dragon of your own, well, this magical book may be the next best thing.

Recommended by Daniel Hahn