Originally published on my blog, Nine Pages.

I wanted to be so much happier with this picture book than I was, partially because its art is amazing and vaguely reminiscent of the art from DreamWorks’ How To Train Your Dragon, which predisposed me towards it, but also because coworkers of mine had been lauding it. Despite its pink protagonist (and why does the female protagonist have to be pink?), it is a boys’ book filled with growling and snapping of teeth and clacking of claws. Those bits would be a lot of fun to dramatize in a story time with one’s own kids. In a story hour, I worried that they might be a bit too scary for some kids and a bit too violent for some parents.

Freddie wonders what it would be like to touch the clouds. Gingersnap tries to fly but falls with style right on top of Freddie. They chase one another—right off a cliff, but Gingersnap catches Freddie, and the two of them land gracefully enough. And as J. K. Rowling has said, “There are some things you can’t share without ending up liking each other, and knocking out a twelve-foot mountain troll is one of them” (Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone). Another, I think, is falling off of cliff. Gingersnap helps Freddie to fly and feel the clouds as the other dinosaurs cannot. Interesting to note here that, though pink, Gingersnap is the one that enables Freddie’s dream rather than it being the other way about.

There’s nothing particularly thrilling about the story, but I do love dragons, and while I wish she weren’t pink, I like that Gingersnap is the one to help Freddie.