Everybody should get to hear their 2nd grade boy read this!

"Sunrise Elementary School had a BIG problem.

The new librarian, Miss Lotta Scales, was a real dragon.

Miss Lotta Scales was hired to guard the Library. And she took her job seriously: hundreds of new, clean books replaced the old, smudged ones. These shining gems neatly lined the shelves of her library lair in perfect order -- no 398.2s in the 500s, and absolutely no fiction among the biographies.

She kept a fiery eye out to make sure no one removed any books from the shelves. Her motto was, 'A place for everything, and that's where it stays.'

The very thought of sticky little fingers

touching

and

clutching,

pawing 

and 

clawing,

smearing

and

tearing

her precious books just made her hot under the collar.

Miss Scales thought that the way some books spread an unfounded fear of dragons was positively inflammatory.

'Books that depict cruelty to dragons should never have been published in the first place.'

She got so fired up about this, she didn't just discard the books she didn't like, she incinerated them.

The kids watched in awe.

'Well, that settles it.' whispered Albert Hoops. 'Where there's smoke, there's fire, and that Miss Scales is a real dragon, all right.'

Not surprisingly, the kids at Sunrise Elementary School began to dread Library Day. It wasn't long before the teachers stopped sending the children to the Library: they kept coming back singed.

First, the principal tried to reason with Miss Scales, but his plan backfired. Instead of cooling her down, he just fanned the flames.

'And finally, don't forget who does the hiring, Miss Scales,' sputtered the principal.

'Oh really? And who does the firing?' asked Miss Scales with a glare and a flare that caught his tie on fire.

'Now cut that out," said the principal as he waved the smoke out of his face.

'No smoking in the Library,' Miss Lotta Scales said drily."

This book has to rank right up there as one of my "most delighting" kids' books to listen to one of my tribe read. Just look at the grin on my boy's face!!! I'd listen to his giggles as he'd sound out one of the harder, very tongue in cheek phrases and caught their silly meaning.

I can't wait to listen to him read it AGAIN!

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The above excerpt is from the book, The Library Dragon, written by Carmen Agra Deedy and illustrated by Michael P. White.

She's written a sequel, too, called

The Return of the Library Dragon!

You can read about it at this blog post:

The Bad Girl of the Book World is Back