Customer Reviews

Attack of the Ninja Frogs, Book 2 (Dragonbreath)

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

My title says it all - kids will love the Dragonbreath books, and their parents can love them, too. These are some of those rare books that, when your child asks you to read them aloud for the umpteenth time you'll say, "Okay!" We've known and loved Ursula's work for years and when we heard she was writing a childrens book series we were thrilled. Her written flights of fancy on her LiveJournal narrating her art are some of the funniest things I've ever read - I knew a kids book would be fabulous. I was not disappointed :)

I must stop a moment before I go on about the *books* and talk about Ursula's art (all illustrations in the book are her own). Her art is the essence of whimsy and hyperbole with a big dash of the slightly twisted. Her paintings run the gamut from cute and fuzzy to laugh-till-you-cry funny, to OMG I don't want to hang that on my wall! But all of her art embraces the absurdity of life, of anatomy, of nature's little jokes at every species's expense and at the misguided idea that we're ever in control of anything. The art in Dragonbreath follows her style with an added dose of hilarity. The expressiveness of the simply drawn animals manages to be both human and completely reptile. The anthropomorphizing of, well, everything cracks you up because yes of course, that's exactly what potato salad would look like if it aged so long in the school cafeteria that it evolved into sentient (and evil) life.

Our Brave Hero, Danny Dragonbreath, has an outlook on life that any child can relate to. Fanciful, whimsical, a tad bit jaded about adult expectations and utterly inventive. A fantasy life almost more real than reality is a concept that speaks to any child, and my kids loved it. This was the first chapter book that my youngest read entirely...and he read it cover to cover in one day. Took him all day! Then his pre-teen older brother sneaked away with it, zipped through it, and declared it awesome. In between times, I was picking up Dragonbreath whenever it wasn't actually in someone's hot little hands and reading it as fast as I could.

The whimsy that works for kids is just as appealing for adults, but there is also a wonderful dry irony that runs as an undercurrent through the Dragonbreath books. Ursula has not written talk-down-to-them lobotomized childrens books. She's written books from the point of view of a child and at a reading level a child can enjoy but with the writing sensibilities and sophisticated perceptiveness of an adult. Not too many authors can do that these days :)

Danny Dragonbreath is one super funny dragonboy. From page 1 I have been hooked till I reach the end of the book. It's so hillarious and engaging.

There is a new girl in school and she is soo unlike other girls eventhough like other girls she wants to be a vet when she grow up. Suki is a smart exchange student from Japan. She loves reading comics and what's more, she is the reincarnation of a ninja queen! One day after school Danny and Wendell help her from two ninja frogs who want to claim her as their queen and so begin their adventure to rid of the ninja frogs once and for all!

The pictures in the book do enhance the story and instead of keep telling the storyline in words the writer switched to gorgeous pictures and thus avoiding the boredom of too many words and no pictures that plaque the kids in age range this book is intended.

I do love this book! It has engaging characters, great storyline, nice pictures, and deliciously hilarious. My ten year old boy has already read this book twice in two days and he's recomended the book to all his friends!

I am constantly looking for books that will keep my eleven year old son entertained. He really loved the Diary of a Whimpy Kid books so when I purchased these books I was looking for a series of fun and entertaining books for him to read this summer. Well needless to say; these books were so entertaining that my son has read the entire series in less than a week. If you have a son or daughter ages 9-12 they are sure to really enjoy this series. The DragonBreath series is cute and very entertaining.The books have some pictures which my son really enjoyed looking at. I highly recommend this series especially for boys and girls that are into the Wizard 101 internet games.

Dragonbreath: Attack of the Ninja Frogs by Ursula Vernon is an incredibly quick MG read. Basically it's about this dragon named Danny who has a BFF named Wendell. Danny is enamoured by kung fu movies and ninjas. A new lizard, Suki, comes to town as part of an exchange program. Wendell gets a crush on Suki. Suki, however, is more than she appears, whether she likes it or not.

To be quite honest, I think this book would resonate well with kids who loved Diary of a Wimpy Kid, except for unlike Greg, Danny seems to really care about his friends. As an adult, I laughed out loud at one scene of the book, where the great-grandfather dragon is meeting Wendell, and he keeps calling Wendell by the name of Wanda. I don't know, I'm really 12 on the inside I swear, since I kept cracking up. Aside from that, I would probably have giggled at the other stuff, had I been a bit younger.

While I didn't exactly love this book, I do see it as being a wonderful book to push on the reluctant reading crowd.

My son received this book for his 7th birthday and read all 206 pages in 4 days (3 of which were after school). I can't say what it is about as I haven't read it but the art is cool and I heard him laugh out loud several times each reading. Any book he loves that much is an awesome find. He can be a reluctant reader, but I never had to coerce him to read this book. His school uses the guided reading system and they assign him books at Q and R levels. He was challenged by some of the words he read here but did not need any assistance with the book and had no problem with comprehension. I am going to borrow all of the series available at our library and purchase the rest here at Amazon. He has previously enjoyed most of Dav Pilkey's and Beverly Cleary books but never really got into Diary of a Wimpy kid.

The Dragonbreath series is written for grade schoolers, but I've followed the author's `Digger' strip on the web and seen some of her other art, so when I saw the library had this book, I picked it up. It's a well written and adorably illustrated (Vernon does both the writing and illustrating) adventure story.

Danny Dragonbreath (who is, obviously, a dragon) is alarmed when his best friend, Wendell, becomes friends with a *girl*. As one may remember from grade school, girls and boys think the opposite sex have cooties at that age. But Suki, who is a Japanese salamander exchange student, is having trouble- she's being stalked by ninja frogs. Danny and Wendell must rescue Suki- but Suki isn't some shy, retiring princess who sits and waits for rescue; she's perfectly capable of fighting for herself.

Despite being a series, the story is totally self contained. While some reference is made to things that happened in the book before, you don't have to know them to get what's happening. The ends are tied up neatly at the end of the book. There is nothing scary to the story; it's light, humorous adventure with goofy kids as the main characters that I suspect a lot of human kids can identify with.

This series was purchased for my son who is 9 years old. He loves this book, loves the comic strips throughout and enjoys the storyline as well. I recommend for any child, especially those who are harder to engage and motivate to read!

I have previously read another book in the series dealing with the Were-Weiners(book 3) and my sentiments towards that book are pretty much the same as with this book(book 2...I am reading in reverse order)

I really don't think I needed the other books for this novel to make sense. This is a novel series that does not really need each book to wrap things up. Each book stands on its own. How can one not love the concept of a dragon that can barely breath fire and an iguana who is his friend? To make it even better, there are ninja frogs and all sorts of weapons and cool other characters.

The setup for these books are essentially the same in every series, but just different characters and plot line, bu the stories move along at the same pace, system, and style. Which is perfect for a younger audience that likes that consistent tone(hello, Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew for us older people).
This book is geared for a younger audience for sure. I breezed through this book and did not really have to focus too hard to understand the plot. I can see some of my sixth grade students really gravitate towards this book. I found it funny and engaging to hold my interest despite the fact that I like more gritty novels. The images and flow of the book worked really well. The addition of the graphic novels panes helps to really keep the story moving very fast. Add in some action and some humor and you have all the ingredients for a hit series. All in all, this was just a fun read. The whole element of martial arts, ninjas, and the addition of a girl character made this book an enjoyable read.

Reason for Reading: Read aloud to my 9yo ds over the March Break.

Summary: Danny has his mind full of imaginary samurai scenarios and watches ninja movies every night because of his current Japanese warfare obsession. Plus ninjas are cool! Then a Japanese exchange student comes to school for a while, Suki Salamander, and Wendell falls a bit in love with her which makes Danny nauseated. Until he finds out that frog ninjas are trying to kidnap Suki. So the three take off to visit Danny's great-grandfather, an expert in the field, who will be able to tell them how to rid themselves of these Ninjas and why they want Suki in the first place.

Comments: I thought the first Dragonbreath book was so-so but my son enjoyed it very much and with a title of "Attack of the Ninja Frogs" we just had read the next one. I'll say I'm glad I did as this one was much more fun (for me) than the first. Obviously a cute story, definitely aimed at boys. Plenty of humour that had both of us laughing and ds was up out of his seat doing his ninja moves at the appropriate times; I even joined in with a few special ninja moves of my own!

The artwork is cute and cartoony. The comic style portions of the book are interwoven throughout and are a part of the story, they can't be skipped. This style of book is becoming known as a hybrid part textual novel/part graphic novel. However, the graphic sequences are kept shorter than are found in the first book. They were kept more to short sequences on the bottom of the page or the occasional full page but were hardly any that ran for more than two pages. Overall, the book does come out to be profusely illustrated rarely showing two pages of plain text without illustration.

The story is quite entrancing; what boy doesn't want to go join up with samurais against ninjas? While all this action is going on there is the back story of Wendall "liking" Suki and being embarrassed and not knowing how to act around her while Danny thinks girls have "cooties" and teases Wendall about having a girlfriend. By the end they both learn a lesson that perhaps doesn't extend to all girldom but has taught them that Suki is not an intimidating girl, no Suki is simply their friend. This whole storyline went way over my sons head though. He has no problems with girls. Except mushy stuff like kissing then he's grossed out but no kissing in this book. My son had never even heard the word "cooties" before and I didn't elaborate on it much, not necessary to tell him about all the rude cootie games and songs we played when I was a kid (LOL)

At the end of the book we are tempted by an announcement that a third book will be coming soon and ds is already sure he wants continue with Danny in Dragonbreath:Curse of the Were-Wiener.