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THE DRAGON WHO WANTED TO FLY by Jeffrey Comanor

THE DRAGON WHO WANTED TO FLY

by Jeffrey Comanor & illustrated by Jeffrey Comanor

Pub Date: Nov. 3rd, 1995
ISBN: 1-57036-202-5

An innovative book—Comanor's first—with a little bit of everything: sympathetic characters, a happy ending, inventive pictures and design. When a condor carries him off to the Far Country, Fedge the dragon is determined to fly home, but since he has no wings, must try other methods—and succeeds with helium balloons. A tongue-in-cheek introduction marks the book as ``homemade,'' and its appearance supports that premise, except that homemade does not mean amateurish. Although the hand-lettered text has large, uneven letters, and the lines are broken in awkward places—like something a child would write—the words flow beautifully, constantly interacting with the illustrations (pausing for a picture) and with readers (posing a question). The illustrations look like they were drawn on unlined loose-leaf paper. The scenes consist of a few squiggles in pen, smeared with watercolors and surprisingly expressive; they'd hardly hold up the story by themselves, but the way they're framed—notebook paper on top of colored pages that look like a stack of construction paper when the book is closed—gives them an unexpected elegance. Comanor synthesizes simple elements and likable characters into a whole that is much greater than the sum of its parts. (Picture book. 4-7)