The Pet Dragon: A Story about Adventure, Friendship, and Chinese…

One day Lin gets a baby dragon as a gift. She and her dragon do all sorts of things together, becoming the best of friends, until one day they have a little too much fun and a vase is broken. Dad insists on caging the baby dragon, but the dragon breaks free in the night and disappears. Lin sets out to find him, and with the help of a witch-woman, eventually finds her friend in the sky with his own family. Everyone lives happily ever after, and the plot is summarized with more words than the story took to tell, I think.

The artwork is appealing--bright colors, bold shapes, and more cute than you'd think could be packed into 32 pages. Chinese characters are integrated into the illustrations; pictures behind the bold black lines of the symbol fill in the details of what the character stands for. Sometimes these overlays make sense, such as where a mountain is drawn in behind a three-pronged symbol; other times the representations miss the mark culturally, such as the symbol for "father" being used as Dad's grumpy facial expression instead of (as the evolution of the character is described in the preliminary note) the suggestion of a man holding an axe.

Many story elements are shoehorned into the plot to show the reader the particular character (i.e., a witch eats a bean from a pot so we can see that the written character for "bean" looks like a little cooking pot). This isn't a primer on learning Chinese--at best, it introduces the idea that there are other writing systems in the world (which is not in itself a bad thing). There are no phonetic pronunciations provided and the characters included have little relation to each other.

In an introductory note, the author clearly states that he's aiming this book at parents (several references to "you and your kids"); that's a tip-off right there of who the anticipated audience is. Young kids may gravitate to the bright, eye-catching pictures, but the story is too loosely held together to truly satisfy. ( )

I think this book is a really cute way to introduce kids to chinese culture. I would have my kids try to write some of the characters they see in the book. ( )

This is a very interesting way to learn Chinese characters as well as customs. ( )

Lin and her pet dragons are best friends and do everything together. When her dragon mysteriously disappears, Lin sets off on an adventure in search for him. Each illustrations has a Chinese character in it, on each page is a new character and the English word with it. The reader not only gets to read a great story about friendship but can also learn a little Chinese too!
Great for introducing new cultures and learning about the Chinese culture. ( )

Lin and her baby dragon do everything with one another. One day her dragon is missing, so she searches for it. She comes across a witch who needs help crossing the river. Lin helps, and the witch knows just how to find her dragon. By lifting Lin up above the clouds, she spots her dragon. Her dragon brings her home and the two make plans on hanging out soon. This book showed many different Chinese charaters. ( )