Once Upon a Dragon by Jean E. Pendziwol

This is about a young girl and her dragon. They are playing at the park when they fall into the dragon's book. They go through each chapter which is a different fairy tale. They run into the wolf from "The Little Red Riding Hood," the fox from "The Gingerbread Man," and all the other bad characters from the classic fairy tale stories. At each encounter, the dragon wants to listen to the bad character but the girl keeps the dragon safe by telling him that he doesn't go with strangers.

I like this book because it is a good lesson book. The whole idea of it is to get kids to understand that they should not listen to or go with strangers. The way the author went about this was very creative. She included many classic fairy tales that children would be familiar with and since they know who the bad characters are, they can begin to understand why it is dangerous to go with strangers. Another thing I really liked about this book was that it all rhymed. This is a longer children's book so it is impressive that Pendziwol was able to make it all rhyme while making sense. The illustrations in this book are done with colored pencils and they are good drawings but I wouldn't consider it anything spectacular. I am more impressed with the text than the pictures. At the end of the book there is a "Dragon's Stranger Safety Rhyme" and there are guidelines for how to talk to kids about strangers. I would recommend this book for kids ages 2-8.