Author: Josh Funk Illustrator: Rodolfo Montalvo Viking Books For Young Readers September 2016
Synopsis (From Publisher):
A sweet and clever friendship story in rhyme, about looking past physical differences to appreciate the person (or dragon) underneath.
George and Blaise are pen pals, and they write letters to each other about everything: their pets, birthdays, favorite sports, and science fair projects. Thereβs just one thing that the two friends donβt know: George is a human, while Blaise is a dragon! What will happen when these pen pals finally meet face-to-face?
CWR Review:
This is a sweet and fun story of a pen pal relationship between a human and a dragon. The story begins with a class of human students receiving instructions from their human teacher about being pen pals with an anonymous student from another class. Then the reader sees the dragon class with a dragon teacher giving the same instruction to his dragon students. Blaise and George are assigned to one another, and the entire book is of their letters back and forth to one another. My kids thought this book was hilarious and it was fun for me to read it aloud to them. The vocabulary is simple, there is rhyme throughout, and the illustrations that show what the receiving character is thinking is just laugh-out-loud cute. We write pen pals every Friday as a writing assignment in our home education, it’s an authentic writing assignment that is fun to do. This book will encourage multiple letters to be written at one time.
Illustrations- Montalvo sketches cartoon-like pictures that show what each character is thinking when his letter is received versus what he actually means. The story ends with the pen pals finally being able to meet one another, and each being shocked that they were writing a different creature the whole time!
It’s funny, its cute, it’ll encourage writingβ¦get yours here or here.
Themes- writing, embracing differences, making new friends, pen pals
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