Zog

Product Information

Madame Dragon first of all teaches her dragon pupils to fly and although Zog begins flying 'fast and free', he eventually crashes into a tree.

I knew that our editor really wanted a dragon story, but it wasn’t till I hit on the name “Madam Dragon” that I decided the book should be a school story. I grew up in a tall Victorian London house with my parents, grandmother, aunt, uncle, younger sister Mary and cat Geoffrey (who was really a prince in disguise. A knight came a long and wanted to take princess Pearl away so the knight and Zog fought over her, but she insisted she was fed up of being a princess and wanted to become a doctor.With a love for dragons, and Donaldson's Gruffalo books, this was a guaranteed purchase when I found it!

The main idea of the story is pretty cool: Madam Dragon runs an elementary school for dragons, where little dragons learn all of the necessary skills and arts of being a dragon: first-graders learn flying, second-graders roaring, third-graders breathing fire, fourth-graders stealing princesses, and so on (you get the idea). Whilst ‘Zog’ may not quite have the feel of a Donaldson/Scheffler classic (a la ‘Gruffalo’ et al) it’s not far off and nevertheless it’s a very strong addition to their already impressive canon of excellent children’s books.My novel THE GIANTS AND THE JONESES is going to be made into a film by the same team who made the Harry Potter movies, and I have written three books of stories about the anarchic PRINCESS MIRROR-BELLE who appears from the mirror and disrupts the life of an otherwise ordinary eight-year-old. When they were honest with themselves and others about how they were feeling and what they truly wanted out of life, they were given the opportunity to fulfil their dreams. We want a song about throwing crumpled-up wrapping paper into the bin” was a typical request from the BBC. Despite his best efforts he is unsuccessful until the girl, now a young woman, offers to come with him revealing she is Princess pearl. This home learning activity pack is based on Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler’s magical storybook Zog.

In year four, he has to capture a princess - can the young girl help him with his trickiest challenge yet? He was the illustrator for Julia Donaldson's first picture book, A Squash and a Squeeze - the start of a hugely successful partnership.

The story follows his attempts at learning to fly, roar and breathe fire, leading to a series of minor injuries for which a mysterious girl provides assorted bandages and plasters. Volunteers then read their re-telling aloud to the class (two read their stories aloud in the class assembly to the school). He moved to England in 1982 to study illustration at the Bath Academy of Art, and then set up home in London. One of my television songs, A SQUASH AND A SQUEEZE, was made into a book in 1993, with illustrations by the wonderful Axel Scheffler. However, the illustrations are spectacular and it really is one of the brightest, well illustrated baby books that we own so far.