While Max watches his brothers play croquet he finds rhyming words to describe his dragon. Fun times with Max' rhymes! ( )

Simple and fun story for kids. With good illustrations. Maybe useful when first starting to teach about rhymes.
Ages 3-9
Source Pierce County Library ( )

Max uses rhymes to guide the actions of his imaginary dragon. Soon his brothers join him in this clever game of words.

In my opinion this book is illustrated and written beautifully. I liked this book because the author conveyed children using their imagination. The language of Max, the main character, is confident. He believes in what he’s saying even when the other children are laughing and chuckling when max is playing hide-and-seek with his dragon. This is where the conflict begins. Max continues to talk about his dragon and the other children refuse to believe him. The writing is kept together by the illustrations. When the children don’t believe it doesn’t say “and then the dragon appeared”, instead the illustrations show us that the clouds begin form a dragon and also a dinosaur that Ben spots out. When the dragon and dinosaur (which are clouds) begin to fight, the author does a great job in describing a realistic fight. The author describes the fight by having sentences like “the wind began to whistle” and “thunder rumbled and clapped”. The descriptive words along with the great illustrations create an epic battle. It was great to see also the children bonding. At first max was playing by himself and by the end all the children were including him. I believe the “big idea” is that imagination can be an awesome thing and anyone can create anything they want if they use their head.

Creative book for students. Great illustrations; aesthetically appealing. Talks about a boy named Max who is eccentric. Shows that imagination can go a long way. Use of rhyming and problem solving skills.