Droofus the Dragon Has a Huge Heart

Dragons are powerful mythological creatures whose role in most tales is to antagonize and terrorize. Sometimes, however, they come across much more sympathetically. Famous fire-breathers of this type include Puff the Magic Dragon, Elliot from Pete’s Dragon and Kenneth Grahame’s Reluctant Dragon. I just ran across another fine addition to this list thanks to prolific author-illustrator and former Disney animator Bill Peet.

In How Droofus the Dragon Lost His Head, Droofus is just a youngster when he falls behind a group of migrating dragons. Unable to find them again, he goes in for a landing and makes a life for himself on the ground. Droofus has an unusually soft heart, and he is more interested in rescuing small creatures than eating them. In fact, he is so tender-hearted that he decides to restrict his feasting to grass. This vegetarian dragon is able to grow to a hearty adulthood, but how will he fare when he is discovered by humans? Will he have the opportunity to demonstrate his goodwill?

Peet has a delightful style of illustrating, and all of his characters brim with personality. Droofus is a vibrant blue and green, while his wings are pink. He seems to shimmer with iridescence. Instead of jagged teeth, he has a jagged mouth, which sometimes looks very happy and sometimes very downcast but never looks ferocious. Most of the other characters are small birds and woodland creatures, but the people who come into the story halfway through are most expressive, particularly the weathered farmer who isn’t sure what to make of this enormous winged reptile.

Peet seems to specialize in animals that are significantly different than others of their kind. In this case, it is Droofus’s eating habits and pleasant manner that distinguish him. However, this is not a story about him gaining acceptance from his fellow dragons. Rather, it’s about him learning to carve out his own path and find a way to prove to the skittish people he encounters that he is not a threat.

This is a fairly long story, with several paragraphs on each page, so it builds slowly, and it works well as a read-aloud. It could even be broken up into halves and read as a two-parter. There is suspense aplenty in this story as the dragon faces an unanticipated injury and a threat from a king who pursues him not out of fear but out of aesthetic appreciation. With such a provocative title to the book, can there be a happy ending for Droofus?

Through it all is the core of kindness in Droofus’s heart and the way that it impacts those with whom he interacts. For those who prefer their dragons friendly, How Droofus the Dragon Lost His Head is a thoroughly satisfying tale.