Part activity, part book, this is great for all dragon enthusiasts. A comprehensive guide to dragons frames this Build the Dragon kit, which includes 46 pieces that are easily slotted together to make your own 3-D model. The dragon comes with moving parts - a jaw that opens and shuts with a lever, and a windup motor that makes the dragon's wings flap. Once the model was built (taking an eleven year old child just over an hour on their own, with only a slight struggle with the motorised wings), we set to exploring the accompanying text. This is a 32 page large full-colour exploration of everything dragon, from a definition, to legends, habitats, anatomy, diet and reproduction. The author has split the world of dragons into Western and Eastern, highlighting the extreme differences between the two, and then used tales of dragons from mythology to highlight their various characteristics as if they were real. Each paragraph of information is accompanied by an illustration or diagram, some captioned, and the text is neatly written - easy to understand and containing a dense amount of information in bite-size chunks. There is much to learn here - from the Guardians of Flaming Pearls to the Venom Spitter, a dragon that didn't breathe fire, but was referenced in a London pamphlet in 1614, which explained that the dragon had used its violent poison to kill both men and cattle. Other highlights include the map of the world showing global myths, and the dragon scales chart. The book ends with a sumptuous colourful dragon guide, highlighting earliest representations of dragons, which vary from written references in AD 680, to depictions on Egyptian bowls in BC 4000. It is excellent and thoughtful of the publishers to provide duplicates of the delicate wings in case they tear, because the motorised wings were fiddly to build and we didn't think would hold up to much play once built, but the rest of the model is constructed from robust cardboard. I also would have loved to know the authors' key sources for their information. * Minerva Reads *
