Here There Be Dragons

Both of these collections of stories and poems are superbly illustrated by duotone pencil drawings by David Wilgus. His detailed pictures are true compliments to what are destined to become classics in children's literature.

It starts off with "Why Dragons?", a poem about St. George, and proceeds to the highly original "Great-Grandfather Dragon's Tale," a story from the point of view of the dragons rather than the humans. There are two evocative little drabbles (stories under a hundred words), the saddening "Dragon Woke and Stretched" and the spellbinding "Sorry the Old Man Said." "Cockfight" is what later became the Pit Dragon trilogy, a story about a young boy on a poor planet which has dragons fighting for money. "Dragon Night" is a sweet little poem, a sort of dragon lullaby. "Dragonfield" is a slightly less interesting story about an unheroic young man and a healer's daughter (and a dragon, of course).

"The King's Dragon" is the story of a member of the King's Dragoons, who has a slight problem when people keep hearing "dragoon" as "dragon." "Into the Wood" is pretty, if a little hard to understand. "Dragon's Boy," which later became a short children's novel, tells the story of the adolescent King Arthur and how he learned wisdom from a "dragon." "The Making of Dragons" is a thoroughly entertaining poem about how to construct a dragon. "One Ox, Two Ox, Three Ox, and the Dragon King" is the story of three boys called One Ox, Two Ox, Three Ox (I think their father had a screw loose), in a story partly influenced by Chinese legends. The collection ends with the wistful "Here There Be Dragons," a poem which harkens back to old maps with those words on them.

As in all of these books, Yolen includes comments and insights to the beginning of each story and poem, what caused her to write them and how they were influenced. David Wilgus's pencil drawings are realistic and soft-edged, very nice to look at and very appropriate to the contents.

A nice little collection for the dragon fanciers, much better than most story collections. Fans of Yolen's "Dragon's Boy" and "Pit Dragon" trilogy will undoubtedly enjoy this.