THE DRAGONS OF SPRATT, OHIO

Scales fall from young folks’ eyes but grow on a ruthless animal experimenter’s skin in this freewheeling fantasy. His parents off to battle for funding, young Salt is left in charge of the Wilds, an exotic animal preserve. Among other duties, it’s up to him to tend a newly hatched clutch of Chinese dragons—a task that becomes life-or-death when Aunt Mary Athena, a cosmetics researcher, suddenly arrives from Paris, intent on developing an anti-aging cream that uses dragon’s blood as its active ingredient. Salt enlists the aid of best buddy Ham to keep the dragons out of his Aunt’s clutches, but it’s Ham’s twin Candi, a classmate struggling to hide her genius and burning interest in science behind a mask of heavy makeup and banal conversation, who really steps up. Zinnen crafts young characters with engaging talents and blind spots, pits them against a scary adversary, folds in some gruesome garage-lab scenes, and brings the tale to a preachy but satisfying close. (Fiction. 10-12)