Dragon Skin
Karen Foxlee
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
ISBN: 9781760526108
Awards Year: 2022
Category: Book of the Year: Younger Readers

Blurb

How to save a dragon:

  1. Assemble equipment. Water, Weet-Bix, sugar, syringe, sticky tape, scissors.
  2. Believe in everything.

Pip never wants to go home. She likes to sit at the waterhole at dusk and remember Mika, her best friend. At home her mother's not the same since her boyfriend moved in. They don't laugh anymore and Pip has to go to bed early, turn off her light and pretend she doesn't exist. When she finds a half-dead creature at the waterhole, everything changes. She knows she has to save this small dragon and return it to where it comes from. But how?

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The CBCA judges say...

This exceptionally well-crafted novel supports the reader to grow with 10-year-old Pip and her friends. Slowly but surely as part of the development of the characters and plot they are able to free themselves from manipulative, controlling and abusive situations in a sensitive and age-appropriate way. This book cleverly deals with themes of loneliness, emotional vulnerability, neglect, verbal and physical abuse and neglect in a calm, hopeful and dignified way and never detracts from the magic found by Pip, Laura and Archie. The parallel between Pip’s needs and the needs of the baby dragon is cleverly written.

The Reading Time reviewers say...

Read the Reading Time review Dragon Skin.

 

Teaching Notes for this book...

The publisher has generously made teaching notes available for this book. Find them on their website below the blurb.

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