From my editor! This is going to be a STARRED (that’s apparently Very Good, as good as it gets for reviews) in Kirkus (this is VERY good, as Kirkus is notoriously cruel):
Dragonbreath. Ursula Vernon. (Dial 978-0-8037-3363-3)
Young everydragon Danny Dragonbreath hasn’t quite caught the knack of breathing fire yet, but he sure knows how to have adventures—or at least to inflict them on Wendell, his peace-loving iguana buddy. Having failed to impress his teacher Mr. Smaug with a hastily concocted report on the fictitious “snorkelbat,” Danny recklessly drags Wendell off to the Sargasso Sea (on a bus) to gather material on actual marine life with the help of his cousin Edward, a sea serpent. Encounters with a shark, poisonous jellyfish, vampire squid (“Instead of ink, they shoot a cloud of glowing snot at you.” “Glowing snot? That is SO COOL!”) and an aggressive giant squid ensue. Vernon’s text abets the suspension of disbelief with Wendell’s dubious regard for the mythological: “He had somehow maintained a fairly solid grip on reality despite being Danny’s friend, but there were limits.” Presented in a hybrid prose/graphic format with simply drawn, two-tone pictures in an appropriately reptilian green, Danny D’s first outing will leave readers in stitches—and on tenterhooks waiting for the next one, which, according to a preview, will feature ninja frogs. (Fantasy. 8-11)
My editor–who called to tell me this–claims that getting a starred review from Kirkus is like being asked to eat at the mean girls’ table in school, so that’s good!
They’re also giving it a spotlight in their graphic novel issue, which is good, too–they did something similar for Nurk, but it didn’t get a starred review, even though they were nice to it, too.
This is promising. I think.
