I Am a Dragon! A Squabble & a Quibble

In a series of watery-hued color-washed vignettes, a large green figure shown emerging from a pond is immediately deemed a frog by a chorus of tiny green amphibians. Though the figure insists that it’s a dragon—not a frog—it’s unable to make headway with the group. “Everybody knows that dragons, unicorns, giraffes, and cupcakes are imaginary,” insists one of the croaking chorus. Initially puzzled by the dogmatic responses (“It is so sad! You don’t know who you are. So we will tell you”), the dragon finds a dragonfly ally (“You are real! You exist!”), and asserts its dragon-ness with a blaze of orange fire (“I. Am. A. Dragon. A very mad dragon!”). The frogs are chastened (“We will be better listeners”), the dragon forgives, and the outcropping on which the haranguing crew has perched is revealed to be a turtle, who earns a hug from the dragon by reminding the assembled that “just because he’s green and wet, that doesn’t mean that he is a frog.” This empathic story of standing tall and fiery in the face of biased groupthink is also wonderfully funny: Hahn (Pineapple Princess) shows impeccable timing across the all-dialogue prose, hitting each comic beat along the way. Ages 4–8. Agent: Jennifer Laughran, Andrea Brown Literary. (July)