Don’t Ask the Dragon

Alem’s birthday finds him alone, sitting on a dock and wondering “where he could call home.” The animals he approaches with the same question—“Where shall I go?”—seem to brush off his inquiry with “I don’t know” and then offer the same advice: “Just don’t ask the dragon. He will eat you!” But while Vick the dragon is an impressively toothy fellow, with a huge grin that extends across the spread, he’s also a vegetarian, and knows exactly where Alem, portrayed with brown skin, belongs: the town of I Don’t Know, “where the bravest go.” There, the boy, who has been told by the dragon that his name means “The World,” has a marvelous birthday celebration, and discovers that “home was always inside him.” Sissay’s (My Name Is Why, for adults) picture book debut has a wobbly, wordplay-dependent narrative line that’s likely to confuse rather than intrigue readers en route to offering reassurance about finding one’s place and people. But Stobbs, also a first-timer, combines cartooning with layers of radiant color—the dragon’s scaly orange and yellow body seems lit from within—in illustrations that draw the eye, and hint visually at key themes, from beginning to end. Ages 3–5. (June)