Sometimes the obvious can also be the impossible. Take dragons, for example. Now say you’re a children’s librarian and a five-year-old approaches your desk and asks you for “a dragon story”. And not one of those two-bit cheapo dragon titles either. Nuh-uh. An honest-to-goodness straight up dragon tale with scales and fire and knights. The whole shebang. Now logically, what with dragons being this eternal bit of subject matter that’s just as popular with the kids now as they were 100 years ago, you should be able to instantly name ten great dragon picture books off the top of your head. Maybe you can too. Maybe you’re particularly gifted in that way. For my part, though, it’s hard to think of iconic dragon-related picture books. The Reluctant Dragon? A great story but a bit long for a tot. The Knight and the Dragon? Wonderful but wordless. The Paper Bag Princess? Awesome story but can we work that word “dragon” into the title somewhere? No, as ridiculous as this may sound it can be really hard to think up dragon stories. The idea that you might give one to the kid that contains not one but TEN cool looking dragons alongside a fun story, an acknowledgement that dragons mean different things in different cultures, plenty of action and plenty of humor . . . well basically just sign me up for some of that! In East Dragon, West Dragon, author Robyn Eversole and illustrator Scott Campbell give kids and adults alike something we have needed, whether we knew it or not, for a very long time.
Our two heroes in this story are East Dragon and West Dragon. East Dragon is our Felix and West Dragon our Oscar. While East Dragon lives a clean and tidy life with lots of dragon siblings and an emperor who truly appreciates dragon culture, West Dragon lives a single messy life dealing with a pesky local king and his equally pesky knights. The two dragons know of one another but each is sure that the other is the more fearsome of the two. One day, West Dragon can’t take the marauding knights a second longer (they interrupted his nap) so he gives them a map that will lead them to adventures. In their travels they run across the emperor who is extremely nice and offers them all his hospitality. Yet what do the pesky knights do in return? They take one look at the local dragon population and attack! Not thrilled at his rude guests, the emperor has the whole lot of them thrown into prison. West Dragon, hearing of their plight, resigns himself to saving them and along the way encounters (and is himself saved by) East Dragon. After much thought the two realize that neither dragon is any better than the other and the dragons, knights, and even the emperor himself all head over the sea to West Dragon’s place for food, fun, and maybe even a little karaoke.
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