Who needs dragons when there are Terrible Lizards to be fought? A readable, if denatured, rendition of a faded classic.
They do, however, nicely reflect the bright, informal tone of the text. In look and spirit, the author’s finely detailed drawings of animals in human dress are more in the style of Lynn Munsinger than, for instance, Ernest Shepard or Michael Hague. George is just George the badger, a retired knight who owns a bookstore, and there is no actual spearing (or, for that matter, references to the annoyed knight’s “Oriental language”) in the climactic show-fight with the friendly, crème-brulée-loving dragon Grahame. The red-blooded Boy is transformed into a pacifistic bunny named Kenny, St. Along with modernizing the language-“Hmf! This Beowulf fellow had a severe anger management problem”-DiTerlizzi dials down the original’s violence. Reports of children requesting rewrites of The Reluctant Dragon are rare at best, but this new version may be pleasing to young or adult readers less attuned to the pleasures of literary period pieces.
Engrossing fare for fans of disaster tales, American history, and slender books. Crofford ably captures the terror and uncertainty of the times, plunks down quick romances for Laurel-who makes the pleasant discovery that, despite what she’s been told, her harelip is no obstacle to kissing, or marriage-and Jed, and wraps up the aftermath in a long postscript.
The shocks don’t stop after a day or two either, but are still coming at random intervals weeks later, culminating in one so massive that the nearby town of New Madrid has to be abandoned. But later that night she, her parents, and her older brother Jed suddenly find themselves forced out into the yard, surrounded by whatever possessions they could snatch, to watch their barn and other buildings fall while the earth bucks and heaves. Despite rumors of some very odd animal behavior, Laurel Mawston has no idea what’s coming when she sees the ink in her inkpot moving. Crofford ( A Place to Belong, 1994) sets her newest historical near the banks of the Mississippi during the earthquakes of 1811–12-earthquakes so violent that thousands died and, at one point, parts of the river ran in different directions.
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