A Dignity of Dragons

Oh my friends. I’m sorry. I have to get shouty. I cannot jump and down on the internets, so I have to get shouty instead. I LOVE THIS BOOK SO MUCH AND SO DOES JULIA, IT’S SO INCREDIBLE AND WE’RE GOING TO BUY OUR OWN COPY because otherwise the library police are a-coming for us to take away our library cards.

I’ve been after this book for a couple of years now. I guess I was stalking a book, which sounds bizarre, right? There’s some books out there that I really want, but either Julia isn’t ready for them at that moment or I’m in a hurry, and I plan to buy it later and then I forget or for various reasons, I’m just thwarted in my attempts to get my hands on a particularly rad book.

Such has been the case with ‘A Dignity of Dragons’ by Jacqueline K. Ogburn and Nicoletta Ceccoli. I wanted it two years ago but knew Julia would be like, “What the hey?”

I finally got it for her from the library and it has not left our hot little hands in over two months. We play 20 questions guessing games about the mythical creatures described in the book. We gaze at the pictures over and over and over and over. AND OVER.

We just can’t get enough of this book.

Here’s why: (because it’s the coolest book with the awesomest art and it has MONSTERS and creatures and cool stuff and FIRE and things that FLY and YETIS and FENG HWANGS.

You know what a feng hwang is, yes?? (A Chinese phoenix.)

And you’ve heard of a murder of crows, right? Or a charm of hummingbirds? There are some weird collective nouns out there describing groups of various animals. That’s the premise of this book.
So you’ll find things like:

a pandemonium of fauns

a glare of cockatrice

a dazzlement of Quetzalcoatls

Julia’s favorite? A ROARING OF MANTICORES. She’s waaaaaay into the manticores.

I love the art by Nicoletta Ceccoli. I’m OBSESSED with her art. I want to LIVE in her art.

I loooooove her art. Just sayin’. A FEW HUNDRED TIMES. The other neat thing is at the very end of the book, there are several pages devoted to describing each mythical creature in more complete detail. I, for one, had zero clue as to what a Thunderbird was. Or that “were” is the general prefix  for a shape-shifter. Are y’all up on your shapeshifters?? You will be after reading this book!

This has been one of Julia’s favorite books ever. Ever, ever. It rocks our socks. Floats our boat. (I’m going to stop rhyming now.) We’ve literally either read it, looked at it or talked about it everyday since we checked it out. This book MUST BE MINE. And also, Julia is on a huge Yeti kick now as well. I think a Yeti stuffy is in her future for Christmastime...