The Moonshine Dragon - Cornelia Funke - Barrington Stoke Review

Interest Age: 6+     Reading Age: 5 - 8

The Moonshine Dragon is a beautiful and enchanting book, (who I had to wrestle off of my son to read and review). Penned by the confident hand of Cornelia Funke author of the bestselling movie adapted Inkheart, it tells the tale of Patrick who wakes on silvery moonlit night to see a dragon crawl out of one of his books, and be pursued by a fearless dragon killing White Knight.

The easy read of this books, makes for a face paced caper, with Patrick soon being shrunk down to the same illustration size as the Dragon and Knight, and finding himself fighting to save hi and the friendly dragon from the lance and crayon wielding White Knight.

The story is funny, with name calling, “Evil fire-worm!”, “Devlish Warlock!”, “Stupid bucket-head” with plenty of action and even an iron dragon being used remotely to deposit the knight back in the book where he belongs. This book will appeal to all children but especially boys as it is fast paced and has plenty of boy’s classic elements, dragons, castles, diggers, untidy room all wrapped in a beautiful cover, accompanied by lovely illustrations by Monica Armino.

Monica Armino’s illustrations are beautiful, creating depth with the limed palette of creating greyscale images, which are full of energy. The characters are full of personality and feel like thay could actually walk off the pages. Patrick is cheeky, freckled and missing a tooth. The White knight is pompous yet strong, and the Dragon is cute. The illustrations look like animations, and it came no surprise to learn that Monica, was involved with designing the Pocoyo TV series which is one of my favourite (my 28th birthday cake had Pocoyo characters on it!)

This is yet another brilliant book from Barrington stoke, that with enthral even more advanced readers, and compel more challenged readers too.