Fairy Tales: Dragons! (With the Exclamation Mark)

I wrote previously that during a workshop class several years ago, some of my students tried to convince me to watch Game of Thrones.

I have less than zero interest in Game of Thrones. If something below Absolute Zero was a possibility, I would take it here. Soap opera doesn't interest me. Nihilism bores me to--not to tears. I don't cry. I just thoroughly don't care (ironically enough). Raunch without affection and relevance makes my brain melt (and I read erotica). Dumb politics (I'm not referring to the books since I haven't read them--but everything I've read about the series indicates...dumb politics) send me screaming back to non-fiction history tomes and the everyday, non-melodramatic, mundane complications of human nature. 

See link.

However, I remember that conversation because when I balked (in a far more mild way--I did not say, "I would rather stick needles in my eyes and cat food down my ears than indulge in that show"), a student exclaimed with utter earnestness, "But it has dragons!" 

Any discussion of fairy tales must include a discussion of dragons.

The fascinating element here is that in the world of fairy tale monsters, dragons are almost always cool--hence, Benedict Cumberbatch as Smaug and Jabberwocky (that voice!). Werewolves can be cool but they are also often angsty with troubling family/pack lives. Vampires can be cool but they are also often campy, very angsty, and all over the place (can endure sunlight, can't endure sunlight; can barely endure indirect sunlight, sparkle in sunlight). 

Dragons are just awesome. Good or bad, they are thoroughly awesome. 

Hence, the number of picture books that focus on the wonder of dragons: Everyone Knows What a Dragon Looks Like by Jay Williams and Mercer Mayer; Dragons Rules and Girls Drool by Courtney Pippin-Mathur, in which, ultimately, the princesses and dragons team up against the knight.

More to come!