Official Review: The Dragon and Peter Fen

[ALRyder]

[Following is the official OnlineBookClub.org review of "The Dragon and Peter Fen" by Keith R. Webster.]

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The Dragon and Peter Fen by Keith R. Webster is a book of poems for children, teens, and adults. The book is broken into 4 parts: “Kids Section”, “Limericks Section”, “Teens & Adults Section”, and “‘The Shorts’ Section”. As a whole the book was filled with mostly four types of poems: life lessons, silly, educational, and ones that told a story. That’s not to say that some of the ones that told a story weren't silly, or that some of the educational ones weren't telling a story either. Most of the poems had a funny twist to them in one way or the other.

Since this was a book with many sections, and many poems in each section, I am going to break the review up to show what I thought of each section. I will mostly be highlighting poems that I truly enjoyed.

Kids Section
To start with, this book is actually titled the same as the very first poem. I had mixed feelings about both the title and the poem. While yes, kids love dragons (I mean, who doesn’t, really?) I thought that there were many other titles within the book that would have gotten a better reaction. Topping my list of candidates would have been: “Teaching Chickens How to Read”, “Llama News”, and “Playing Paddy-Cakes With a Turtle”. Oh trust me, there are many other cute titles to choose from in this book, but I don’t want to fill this review with all of the alternatives; especially because I know that this is entirely my own opinion. Why I’m really mentioning the fact that I feel the title could have been something different, is because I also didn’t feel that the poem chosen was even close to the strongest.

As I mentioned before, there are four different types of poems in this book, "The Dragon and Peter Fen" was one that told a story with a little life lesson thrown in. I found that many of the poems that told a story were the weakest of the bunch. They had a tendency not to flow as well, and to have a harder time holding a child’s attention. All of these poems were tested on my three year old, and while yes, a three year olds attention span is not the longest, she has thoroughly enjoyed listening to the chapter books in the past.

With all that being said, most of the poems in the “Kids Section” were really cute and entertaining. Most of them flowed well, though I don’t know that I would sit and read the entire section in one sitting, because a lot of them did have the same rhythm, which can start to belittle the entertainment value after a while.

Some of my favorite poems were the ones intended to be educational. I have a love of science and animals, which was what a lot of these type poems had to do with. Some of the poems of this nature were:

The Dragonfly: This was a poem about the dragonfly; what they eat, how they breathe, where they live, etc.

A Parliament of Owls: This poem tells you the different terms we use for groups of animals; “A gaggle of geese”, “A ‘pod’ is a group of whales”, etc.

Dolphin Sleep: While this one doesn’t give a ton of information, it does teach kids that while dolphins do live in the ocean they can’t breathe under water. So it raises the question, “how does a dolphin sleep?”

Many of the poems that I would classify as educational encourage kids to ask questions, and don’t give over simplified explanations. I really like that the answers given were not dumbed down, but instead were a lot like watching animal planet where facts are clearly stated. I also liked that while everything was easy to understand, large words were thrown into the rhyming scheme here or there. Some of the words used many adults would even have to look up. I always love a book that encourages children to expand their vocabulary. I definitely got the feeling, the more that I read this book, that the author has a background in the science and math world, either that or just really loves the two subjects.

Some of the silly poems I enjoyed were:

The Rain That I’m Afraid Of...: This is a poem about raining cats and dogs, and being “pummeled with falling frogs”, and a few other animals falling from the sky, and then it goes into what the author is really afraid of coming out of the clouds…but for that you’ll just have to read and find out.

Rhinos Cheat: I thought this one was really cute. It’s pretty much telling you to never play a board game with rhinos;
“…the rules they always bend.
They say it’s because their eyesight
Is really not that great;
But they catch you if you get sneaky,
So that point is up for debate…”

My favorite poem about life lessons was;

Everything Changes: This was about everything changing; grapes to raisins, pyramids to dunes, kittens to ornery cats, etc. In fact, this was probably my favorite poem in the entire book, because it flowed so well and the message was a really good one.

Limericks Section
This was probably my least favorite part of the book. Many of these were dorky little poems that had some sort of lesson. None of them were terrible, and some were pretty decent, but none of them really stuck out to me.

Teens & Adults Section
This was a section I really had mixed feelings about. Again, while none of the poems were “bad” about half of them were just decent. I think part of my issue with these poems was that the rhythm of them was not all that different from the children’s poems. Most of them still had kind of that playful tone to them. Many were about life lessons, and just things we go through once we grow up, and that was fine, but many of them weren’t something I would normally read for entertainment.

Some of my favorite poems in this section, because there were still some really good ones, were:

While They Watch, Dream: This was about a soldier talking to his men, telling them to go to bed while other men watched over them in enemy lands. It’s a sad, sweet poem, and the flow was quite a bit different from the rest, which was refreshing.

Too Much Waste is How Much?: This is when the author's love of math really shows. This poem talks about all the wasted money that goes into gas sitting at toll booths. Yes, the math is actually done, and the amount of money per day is astronomical.

Why Would Men Be Confused?: This one really made me laugh. It is so true in so many relationships out there that men get mixed signals from their women. I wanted to get this book for a few guy friends, just so that they could read this one poem and appreciate it.

As you can see I definitely found some treasures in this section of the book, but there were many that just didn’t interest me all that much. So my feeling was pretty neutral toward it. On the plus side, because this is a book of poems for all ages, if your child happened to read these, I didn’t think any of them entirely inappropriate.

“The Shorts” Section
While I’m not going to point out any of these that were my favorite, I found that I enjoyed most of the poems in this section. If I had to choose my favorite part of this book, this would be a very close second to the kids section.

So, after a long review, that was kind of hard to write because of all the variety to be found in this book, I come to the rating portion and why. I would definitely suggest this to anyone looking for a good book of children’s poetry. I think that this was really good for family reading.

With that being said, I do feel that there were weaknesses in the book as well, that I can’t ignore. If an adult or teen were looking for a book of poems I would have quite a few suggestions before coming to this one. As I said I did enjoy this section, but I don’t think it was consistent enough to be something I would suggest. That section does take up a good portion of the book, so it has to be taken into consideration. With everything I already stated about rhythm not changing up too much, and consistency, I am going to rate this one 3 out of 4 stars. A good poetry book for the little ones, with a few party favors for the adults.

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[npandit]

Oh, this is interesting. It's always nice to come across children's books that are not afraid to use adult vocabulary, and are more educational. The only thing I find a little unusual though is how some of the poems are for teens and some are for little kids. That's a pretty big gap; I guess it would work for someone who may have a teen and a three year old in the house? I'll have to check this one out for my niece. Great review!

[gali]

Thank you for the lovely review. This book isn't for my son, but I enjoyed reading your review.

[ALRyder]

Thanks guys!

The only thing I find a little unusual though is how some of the poems are for teens and some are for little kids.

Yeah, I think that the author had an okay idea, but I don't know if it went over as well as it could have. I definitely feel that the author is much stronger with children's poetry, and those alone made it worth the read. Also, the "Teens and Adults Section" seemed to have more for adults in my opinion. The kid's poems went well just before a chapter of "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" each night though

[npandit]

Yeah, I think that the author had an okay idea, but I don't know if it went over as well as it could have. I definitely feel that the author is much stronger with children's poetry, and those alone made it worth the read. Also, the "Teens and Adults Section" seemed to have more for adults in my opinion. The kid's poems went well just before a chapter of "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" each night though

It does seem a bit odd to have such a huge leap in his target audience. Maybe he should have broken it up into two different books. The 'one size fits all' sort of book concept seems a bit too unfocused.

(And for some reason, the fact that you read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory to your kids each night makes me so happy. I hope you are able to carry on the tradition of reading to them for a long time. Slightly related, have you read: "The Reading Promise"? It's a true story about a girl who makes a pact with her dad that he'll read to her for 1,000 nights in a row without exceptions, and they not only accomplish their goal, but end up doing it until the day she goes to college. It's written as vignettes of different points of her life growing up, and she talks about some of the funny challenges this pact presented as she grew into a teenager.)

[ALRyder]

Books have been such a large part of my life through the years I can't imagine not sharing that with my daughter. Plus, there are a lot of great new books I'd never read if I weren't reading them to her. This gives me the chance to experience the joy of being a child all over again.

I looked up that book. It looks interesting, and I can imagine how that could present problems from time to time. Lol. I don't normally read books like that, but I might just have to give that one a gander.

[npandit]

That is true, and yes, a wonderful way to fall in love with new books.

Yeah, if you ever get the chance to read it, it's a really sweet, short read. The author was only 21 or 22 when she published it (all that reading certainly paid off!)