From Publishers Weekly
With tongue planted firmly in cheek, Base (Animalia) poses as the Victorian scientist Rowland W. Greasebeam, B.Sc. (Serpentology), F.R.Aud., to serve up this compendium of dragon lore and sheer inventive nonsense. Expanding on a dozen illustrations from his calendar Dragons Draaks & Beasties, Base fabricates a trio of correspondents?a Viking, a Chinese silk trader and a Prussian explorer?whose letters chronicle their discoveries of dragons in various continents. The resulting web of yarns that Base spins is nothing short of hilarious ("Hope the looting and pillaging went well," writes Bjorn of Bromme in a letter to Olaf the Grim, for instance). Illustrations showcase the kind of intricate detail for which Base is so well known, and he bolsters his dragon art with a deadpan running commentary set in a border at the bottom of each page. "Dagbar defunctus est" notes one caption in a fit of understatement, as the accompanying cartoon depicts the demise of one of Bjorn's companions. There's much to enjoy here, and much to propel readers to seek out every last drop of humor. All ages.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From School Library Journal
Grade 4 Up-Adopting the persona of Rowland W. Greasebeam, B.Sc. (Serpentology) F.R.Aud., Base explores one of the animal kingdom's most exotic niches, presenting the stained, tattered letters of three (fictional) early dragon hunters, along with brief footnotes and a series of oversized, spectacularly detailed illustrations. All three individuals made their discoveries inadvertently: young Soong Mei Ying on a business trip to 13th-century Kathmanadu; 9th-century Viking Bjorn of Bromme on another sort of business trip to ancient Britain; and Dr. E. F. Liebermann, a contemporary of Darwin, on an ill-fated quest to prove that Africa, Tasmania, and Madagascar were once connected. All three find several dragon species, from the cat-sized Japanese Butterfly Lizard to Madagascar's gigantic and remarkably unsavory Common Green Draak. Though descriptions of each creature's appearance and habits tend to be general and understandably hasty first impressions, young readers will pick up all sorts of little-known facts: that few dragons breathe fire, for instance, and that many are vegetarians, including the infamous St. George Dragon, which "...can most commonly be seen in the remoter parts of Andalucia, lying in wait for passing grocery trucks." The letters are, fortunately, all written in English, and present no legibility problems; readers who skip them in favor of poring over the paintings, which appeared previously on a calendar, or the running frieze at the bottom, in which each correspondent's career is reprised, will find the art as tongue-in-cheek as the text, replete with toothy, scaled, but nonetheless seldom scary monsters. A browser's delight.
John Peters, New York Public LibraryCopyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
