My Father's Dragon
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
My Father's Dragon is a children's novel by Ruth Stiles Gannett about a young boy, Elmer Elevator, who runs away to Wild Island to rescue a baby dragon. The illustrations within the book are black and white done with a grease crayon on a grained paper, done by Ruth Chrisman Gannett, who also illustrated other children's books such as My Mother Is the Most Beautiful Woman in the World, Paco Goes to the Fair, Hipo the Hippo, and adult books such as Tortilla Flat by John Steinbeck and Cream Hill by Lewis Gannett. My Father's Dragon is a Newbery Honor Book and an ALA Notable Book.
My Father's Dragon is the first book of a trilogy. The other titles are Elmer and the Dragon and The Dragons of Blueland. All three were published in a 50-year anniversary edition as Three Tales of My Father's Dragon.
The book was made into an anime film titled, Elmer's Adventures: My Father's Dragon in 1997 in Japan.
[edit] Synopsis
Elmer Elevator meets and befriends a talking alley cat. Although Elmer's mother tries to prevent the cat from living in her house, Elmer still feeds and meets her. At one of their meetings, the cat tells Elmer, who wants to fly, of an imprisoned dragon on Wild Island. He and the cat stock up on a variety of supplies, and the cat sees him off when he runs away.
On Wild Island, Elmer meets a confused mouse, several gullible tigers, a vain lion, a gloomy rhinoceros, an irritable gorilla attended by servile monkeys, and egotistical crocodiles. He uses the items in his pack and his own quickness of thought to play off their weaknesses and manages to free Boris the dragon safely.
