Saint George and the Dragon - Softcover

Geraldine McCaughrean is a prize-winning author - winner of Carnegie Medal, Guardian Children's Fiction Award, Whitbread Award (twice) and the Blue Peter Book of the Year Award.

Grade 1-4-- Less literary than Spenser's adventure as retold by Hodges in Saint George and the Dragon (Little, 1984), McCaughrean tells the kind of crusader tale popularly told about the wandering champion who became the patron saint of England. Here, George of Lydda comes across Sabra, the king's daughter, staked out for a dragon that threatens their town. A new British illustrator pictures the setting with a golden atmosphere and a romantic surrealism that includes stone ruins and windowed manors, and ends with visual reference to modern wars as well. Townspeople wear frantic or grotesque expressions--and the dragon is seen as a huge lizard with pterodactyllike clawed wings as forelimbs, taloned hind legs, and a lobed and spiked dorsal mane. Once he subdues the dragon, this Red Cross knight does not settle down, but goes on to other dragons and other times--which the reteller ties in with her afterword. Hard to locate in print, this adventure makes a good addition to folk and dragon lore. --Ruth M. McConnell, San Antonio Pub . Lib .
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