About this item

Fans of How to Train Your Dragon will love this whimsical tale, the first in a series, by a Newbery Honor winner, featuring charming illustrations and pet "training tips" in each chapter. Crusty dragon Miss Drake has a new pet human, precocious Winnie. Oddly enough, Winnie seems to think Miss Drake is her pet - a ridiculous notion! Unknown to most of its inhabitants, the City by the Bay is home to many mysterious and fantastic creatures, hidden beneath the parks, among the clouds, and even in plain sight. And Winnie wants to draw every new creature she encounters: the good, the bad, and the ugly. But Winnie's sketchbook is not what it seems. Somehow, her sketchlings have been set loose on the city streets! It will take Winnie and Miss Drake's combined efforts to put an end to the mayhem . . . before it's too late. This refreshing debut collaboration by Laurence Yep, a two-time Newbery Honor winner and a Laura Ingalls Wilder Award winner, and Joanne Ryder features illustrations by Mary GrandPr. Praise for A Dragon's Guide to the Care and Feeding of Humans*"Warm humor, magical mishaps, and the main characters' budding mutual respect and affection combine to give this opener for a planned series a special shine." -BOOKLIST , Starred "Aternately comical, suspenseful and sometimes sweetly emotional." -Kirkus Reviews "With a black-and-white spot illustration opening most chapters, an engaging narrator, and a consistently fluid writing style, this title makes a fine dragon choice for readers." -School Library Journal "In this series launch, Yep and Ryder conjure up a world where dragons and humans interact, and the results are heartwarming and quite funny." -Publishers Weekly "A clever and amusing novel that imagines a magical world that nestles right up against our own and sometimes crosses over." -The Bulleting of the Center for Children's BooksPraise for A Dragon's Guide to Making Your Human Smarter"Yep and Ryder keep the magic coming with their whimsical fantasy, enhanced by Grandpr's sweet drawings. The story positively vibrates with fun." - Kirkus Reviews" Lighthearted episodes of unusual school lessons and field trips, illustrated by GrandPr's winsome spot art, are grounded by Miss Drake's more serious encounters with the goons...a gratifying development as this buoyant, fantastical series continues." - The Horn Book Review



About the Author

Laurence Yep

Born June 14, 1948 in San Francisco, California, Yep was the son of Thomas Gim Yep and Franche Lee Yep. Franche Lee, her family's youngest child, was born in Ohio and raised in West Virginia where her family owned a Chinese laundry. Yep's father, Thomas, was born in China and came to America at the age of ten where he lived, not in Chinatown, but with an Irish friend in a white neighborhood. After troubling times during the Depression, he was able to open a grocery store in an African-American neighborhood. Growing up in San Francisco, Yep felt alienated. He was in his own words his neighborhood's "all-purpose Asian" and did not feel he had a culture of his own. Joanne Ryder, a children's book author, and Yep met and became friends during college while she was his editor. They later married and now live in San Francisco. Although not living in Chinatown, Yep commuted to a parochial bilingual school there. Other students at the school, according to Yep, labeled him a "dumbbell Chinese" because he spoke only English. During high school he faced the white American culture for the first time. However, it was while attending high school that he started writing for a science fiction magazine, being paid one cent a word for his efforts. After two years at Marquette University, Yep transferred to the University of California at Santa Cruz where he graduated in 1970 with a B.A. He continued on to earn a Ph. D. in English from the State University of New York at Buffalo in 1975. Today as well as writing, he has taught writing and Asian American Studies at the University of California, Berkeley and Santa Barbara.



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