thistlechaser | Book #77 of 2024: Dragons With Drizzles (Reply)

Dragons With Drizzles (International School of Dragon Training) by Gina Kammer (author), Diana Renzina (artist).

Quick synopsis: In a magical school where everyone has a dragon partner, Zuli's only friend is her dragon. When a new disease strikes the dragon population, it's up to her to save them and her whole school.

Brief opinion: A cute story that young readers would probably really enjoy.

Plot: Set in a land called Drakenkind, magic only works when people and dragons are partnered up. Zuli Cloud and her dragon Rainbow attend the International School of Dragon Training, but Zuli has no friends. She is a skilled tinkerer (she makes magical equipment) and feels like everyone uses her for that.

One day all the dragons start getting sick with something she calls the Drizzles (they sleep a lot and cause weather to happen around them). She has to make friends with another student to cure them and keep her school from being closed down.

Writing/editing: Both were perfect, I spotted no errors.

What I Liked/What I Didn’t Like: All in all this was a cute story, but because it was meant for very young readers there were a number of shortcuts taken. Things like two characters going from HATING each other (their whole countries not getting along) to being good friends after a single apology.

It was also very short (took me about an hour to read).

A number of "hard" words were in bold and you could look them up in a glossary at the back of the book, that kept knocking me out of the story. Plus, while words like "cloak", "tripod", and "recipe" were listed, somehow "makeshift" wasn't. Makeshift was probably the most challenging word in the book.

Every few pages there was a picture. I liked the style used for people: