Dragons in Self-Isolation
Hello lovelies!
To keep my mind off the news, I’ve been thinking about what the Wings of Fire dragons would do if this global pandemic/quarantine situation happened to them. I mean, Clay is clearly a comfort baker, don’t you think? He would 100% show up outside your house to leave baskets of scones and muffins on your doorstep…unless he accidentally ate them all on the way over, which, as a comfort eater myself, I can also imagine! (Literally my husband’s one and only flaw is that he is not a comfort baker. The only cookies he’s made in quarantine had KIDNEY BEANS IN THEM, people. KIDNEY. BEANS. They were a TRICK to get the children (and, I suspect, me!) to EAT KIDNEY BEANS. GOOD HEAVENS. That is NOT THE POINT OF COOKIES, SIR.) (Clay would NEVER!)
I think Glory would be all over organizing the rainforest, figuring out ways to get food to dragons in every kingdom who need it, teaching RainWings to make masks out of leaves (and then growling at them when they keep adding sparkles and colorful feathers) (you know they would!), and keeping detailed spreadsheets of who got sick when, where they were, who they were with, and how many guard dragons Deathbringer still has assigned to follow her around, even though they could clearly be doing more useful things.
Tsunami, meanwhile, would be LOSING HER MIND in isolation. Can you IMAGINE? It would be like being trapped under the mountain all over again. She would be calling all the queens every day to yell at them about providing protective equipment and supporting their hospitals and making testing available to every dragon.
And if they had to close Jade Mountain Academy, Sunny and Starflight would be so sad!
Starflight: I miss school.
Tsunami: This IS school. You’re LITERALLY TRAPPED IN A SCHOOL.
Sunny: But with no students! I miss our students so much!
Starflight: And no homework!
Tsunami: Three moons, if you say you miss homework I will stuff this fish up your nose.
Clay (waking up): Did someone say fish? Is it time for dinner?
Starflight (mournfully): I haven’t read a poorly-worded essay with too many commas in it in WEEKS.
Fatespeaker: I’ll write you one! And then read it to you! I promise I’ll read out every single wrong comma!
Peril: Hey, hey everyone, GUESS WHO is a total expert at social distancing?
Sunny: Is it–
Peril: IT’S ME!
Everyone:
Peril: Because of the not touching anyone. Because of how if anyone touches me they’ll burst into flames.
Starflight: Yeah, we got that.
Peril: So if you have any questions about staying six feet apart and NOT setting other people on fire, I am the dragon to ask! OR NOT THAT’S FINE TOO, you can go ahead and set yourselves on fire, see if I care.
Clay (affectionately): Peril, come help me figure out what a “scone” is.
The two books I wanted to shout out to today are pretty new, so I’m still working my way through them, but my ten-year-old read them in a flash and loved them both!
Dragon Hoops, by Gene Luen Yang
Gene Luen Yang also writes the Secret Coders series, which is illustrated by Mike Holmes, the wonderful illustrator of the Wings of Fire graphic novels. It’s a super fun, surprising series that secretly teaches readers about coding, and I highly recommend them, too!
The second book has a kind of prescient, kind of unfortunate but funny title for a fairly new book (it came out last September):
The World Ends in April, by Stacy McAnulty
It’s about a girl with a survivalist grandfather, who finds a site on the Internet that claims an asteroid is coming to strike the Earth in April. I am about halfway through and I LOVE it so far! I keep putting down my grown-up literary book (even though it’s also great!) to read this one instead. And we were not allowed to talk to Jonah while he was finishing it, but we could hear a lot of gasps and freaking out noises and afterwards he said it was AMAZING.
Stacy McAnulty is also the author of The Miscalculations of Lightning Girl, about a girl who was hit by lightning and is now a math genius, and we really liked that one, too!
And finally, two more extremely wonderful independent bookstores I’ve visited and loved, who you can order from directly to help keep them alive!
Little Shop of Stories in Decatur, Georgia
The Learned Owl Book Shop in Hudson, Ohio
Hugs to you all! More soon! 🙂