  | Full Text Reviews: School Library Journal - 04/01/2014 K-Gr 2—This unique counting book will be a hit with children who love looking at finely detailed illustrations and searching for hidden items on each page. A boy has lost his dragon and asks the building doorman if he has seen him. The spread shows one large green dragon in a fancy apartment building. When the doorman answers, "No," the boy goes looking for him all throughout the city. "Maybe he got hungry and stopped for a hot dog," he thinks. But even as he buys a hot dog of his own, he doesn't see the dragon hiding and eating one himself. That's two. He passes three purple busses, but doesn't see the dragon. Four blue sailboats raise the possibility that he went for a swim in the river. And so it goes, up to 20, when the boy finds him "right where I left him," hiding on the roof near 20 red paper lanterns. The book is illustrated in pen and ink in a picture-book style that is reminiscent of the late 1950s to early 1960s. The drawings are produced in black ink only, except for the highlighted object on each page. A map on the endpapers outlines the route the boy takes throughout the city. All in all, an excellent offering.—Roxanne Burg, Orange County Public Library, CA - Copyright 2014 Publishers Weekly, Library Journal and/or School Library Journal used with permission. Booklist - 04/01/2014 A dragon is on the loose in New York City, but rather than inciting terror, he provides an opportunity for a gentle quest and counting game. Light (Zephyr Takes Flight, 2012) takes readers on a tour of lower Manhattan with a little boy as he travels from spot to spot looking for his escaped pet. Hiding behind a potted plant and going nose-to-nose with a poodle, gobbling down a hot dog, or making his way through the water system, the dragon eludes the boy all the way from 1 dragon to 20 red lanterns in Chinatown. Drawn with a fountain pen, Light’s distinctive illustrations have a bold, thick line and deep texture and are highlighted with dashes of color to help identify objects to count. His cityscapes capture the bustle of New York City, and children will have as much fun exploring the city as they do trying to spot the sneaky dragon hidden within. A rough map of the city serves as the book’s endpapers, so little eyes can follow along. - Copyright 2014 Booklist. Bulletin for the Center... - 06/01/2014 The young protagonist of this counting book has lost his dragon and treks all over the city, down by the harbor (“It’s possible he went for a swim”), through the zoo (“Has my dragon been here to visit the monkeys?”), until finally finding the creature at a temple in Chinatown (“There he is! Right where I left him”). Along the way, the boy counts important parts of the landscape (three buses, four sailboats) from one to twenty. The simple journey and even the counting are merely excuses, however, to take in the lavish cityscapes of the pen and ink illustrations: each spread features detailed black and white drawings using thick and thin nib techniques to achieve a calligraphic effect. The countable elements are washed over with a single colorful pigment, setting them apart for easy picking out. The boy’s bland cartoonishness contrasts strikingly with the whimsical sharp angles and fascinating use of perspective (as with a vertical cutaway of an apartment building where deliverymen have seven boxes or a street view that angles from birds-eye to head-on for eight fire hydrants). The intricate penwork will get lost in busyness if shared with an audience; this is one for poring over, so that youngsters can not only count the color-coded hot dogs, balloons, and subway cars but also spot the dragon sneakily hiding just out of our narrator’s view each step of the way. TA - Copyright 2014 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois. Loading...
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