Not Your Typical Dragon: A Literary Analysis

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Overview/ Features
Not Your Typical Dragon is a reinvigorated story Dan Bar-el has written with a different twist. Rather than the knight as a typical hero, this story portrays the dragon to be the protagonist and the knight as his sidekick. The story is enlivened with Tim Bowers’ hilarious and enthusiastic illustration. The use of acrylic paint creates a vibrant and warm pictorial environment which reassures young readers that the story takes place in a safe and friendly place. Everyone knows your typical dragon breathes fire. But when Crispin the dragon tries to breathe fire on his seventh birthday, fire does not come out, only whipped cream! Crispin thinks his inability make him a failure, so he runs away. Meeting …show more content…

They are central to engaging young children in learning to read. Incorporating Not Your Typical Dragon in a class read-aloud, the educator needs to attend to the features in order to see the visual aspect in context, so that meaning making is a seamless and connected experience (Callow, 2016).
Reading Not Your Typical Dragon aloud with young readers creates a space to consider and discuss the ideas and themes inherited in children’s literature (Serafini, 2014). It also allows for educators to model and scaffold proficient reading skills (Serafini, 2014). Using this story to model the components of a narrative promotes discussion about the characters, setting, plot, problem and solution, which supports children to build a timeline of the events that occur in the story.
Using Not Your Typical Dragon and interactive discussion as a pedagogical scaffold (Serafini, 2014) enables educators to extend children’s vocabulary and share their emerging ideas. Discussing the features throughout the process of reading the story a second time consists at the beginning, middle and end, this enables educators to further extent on the theme or chosen area (Callow, 2016). The use of prodigious language throughout the story encourages curiosity, inviting the children to point out unfamiliar words and discussing their meanings, and also facilitates further extension on their

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