My Father’s Dragon by Ruth Stiles Gannett

1948

Illustrated by Ruth Chrisman Gannett

 Consider the diversity of dragons in children’s literature. At one end of the spectrum is the fire-breathing princess-snatching type favored by St. George. Think of Smaug, Bilbo Baggins’ nemesis in The Hobbit. Then there is the warrior dragon fighting the dark forces, exemplified by Saphira (a rare she-dragon), raised from a hatchling by Eragon, the Dragon Rider, created by the boy wunderkind, Christopher Paolini. At the other end is The Reluctant Dragon, a pacific poet created by Kenneth Grahame, who strikes a bargain with St. George to stage a mock battle that will appease their fans. Somewhere in between are the dragons, a plague of them, created by the inimitable E. Nesbit in The Deliverers of Their Country (a story in the collected The Book of Dragons) – dragons that create a nuisance, beginning with the tiny one that lands in Effie’s eye, and that are ultimately dispatched through the matter-of-fact ingenuity of children.

The dragon in Ruth Stiles Gannett’s trilogy resembles a balloon in a Macy’s Thanksgiving day parade. Adorned with blue and yellow stripes, golden wings, and red accents, he has the appearance of a friendly blimp, as drawn by Ruth Chrisman Gannett (the author’s stepmother). My Father’s Dragon begins with 9 year old Elmer Elevator befriending an old alley cat. Upon hearing that Elmer longs to fly, the cat tells him of a baby dragon being held captive on Wild Island. Elmer assembles a curious assortment of odds and ends (including chewing gum, pink lollipops, rubber bands, magnifying glasses, multi-colored hair ribbons, and 25 peanut butter and jelly sandwiches) and stows away on a ship bound for Tangerina. Making his way to Wild Island, he encounters wild boars, tigers, a rhinoceros, a lion, a gorilla. The most entertaining is a mouse that transposes his consonants, as in “’I must smell tumduddy. I mean, I must tell somebody.’” Elmer’s assorted possessions provide the various diversions needed to distract the beasts, most famously when he attaches a pink lollipop to the tail of each crocodile with a rubber band, thereby prompting them to create a lollipop-sucking crocodile bridge across the river. Freeing the baby dragon from captivity, the two float away, thus fulfilling Elmer’s dream of flight.

The book is disarmingly simple. It has an airy freshness and naivete that is instantly appealing. Gannett, four years out of Vassar, wrote the book effortlessly over a two week period in between odd jobs. Her stepmother, an established artist, provided illustrations and encouraged publication. The two continued their collaboration with Elmer and the Dragon and The Dragons of Blueland.