Jeremy Thatcher, Dragon Hatcher by Bruce Coville

Jeremy Thatcher, grade six, spends his time drawing and avoiding girls and bullies.  One day as he is doing just that, he stumbles across a magic shop.  Once inside, the strange proprietor, Mr. Elives, sells him a marble-like object that he later discovers is actually a dragon egg and he is expected to hatch it and then care for the dragon that it produces!

I didn’t particularly enjoy this book but I’m not exactly the target audience so I’m going to turn this review over to my seven year old son and he can tell you what he thought of the book.

Isaiah:

“I liked this book because of the dragon.  There was a really funny part where the dragon chased the cat into the dining room and caused a lot of trouble.  I liked that the book was about magic.  At the beginning, I didn’t like the book because it started out kind of boring.  My favourite character was the dragon because it burned the art teacher’s foot.  My favourite part of the book was the ending (which we aren’t going to tell you about because we don’t want any spoilers!)”

I thought this book had a lot of potential but I think I’ve been spoiled by all the really great children’s fantasy out there.  (Harry Potter, Fablehaven etc.)  I just found that it moved too slowly and there wasn’t a whole lot of excitement.  But my seven year old seemed to enjoy it.