Excellent addition to the How to Catch collection of tales. In this one, the story centers on kids trying to catch the Chinese New Year's dragon and learning that family and friends stick with one another through thick and thin. Wonderful illustrations and translated version in the back of the book. Perfect for any younger middle grade reader.

Thank you NetGalley and Sourcebooks Jaberwocky for the opportunity to read an advance reader copy.

Another great ”How to Catch” book by Adam Wallace. Students will be excited to follow the journey to catch the dragon to bring heath and fortune, but can they do it? In this book, students will learn all about Chinese New Year. The translations by Suk Lee introduce children to a different language/culture and help them appreciate the tradition of the Chinese New Year. This book is a great read for young students!

I really don't know how to feel about <i>How to Catch a Dragon </i>by Adam Wallace and illustrated by Andy Elkerton. On the one hand, I really wanted to enjoy the story, but on the other it's just kind of missing the mark. And I get that perhaps not all children's books have to make sense, but there are certain things about this book that give me pause. And it all comes down to Chinese culture and diversity.

I'm not understanding why this Chinese New Year seems to be set in the past, a pre-technology kind of feel surrounds the whole book, which wouldn't really be a problem  if they book didn't include a whole bunch of characters of different diversities. And perhaps I'm being a bit harsh, but I'm kind of baffled as to why a white kid needs to be involved in a book that's portraying a story about a cultural tradition of China. It kind of makes the whole thing feel Westernized, which isn't good.

With that said, I did really enjoy most of the artwork and though the meter of the poetry is <i>way</i> off, it didn't bother me so much that it took too much away from the story. I don't think a kid is really going to mind that either, but I will admit that I do think it takes a little bit away from the overall song-feel of the tale, which I believe was the purpose of rhyming in the first place. The story is simple and nice.

My favorite part, however, was the inclusion of Mandarin translated words both throughout the book and in the back. It's an excellent learning opportunity for some children. It definitely wouldn't be enough if one is looking to have their child learn a second language, but it's still a great inclusion.

So, in the end I'm somewhat back and forth regarding how I feel about this book. As I can't make up my mind, a rating of three seems reasonable.

<i>I was provided a free copy of this book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.</i>

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I enjoyed the fun this story weaves into the children trying to catch a dragon. The simplicity of the pictures are not overwhelming. They provide the right amount of art and support to what is being read in the text. In addition, the artwork is very colorful, and works well with the Chinese culture that the story is representing.

This would be a very nice addition to any storytime selection of books, and most definitely to a library's collection.

My beautiful, precocious, literature loving daughter and I read this together and are reviewing it in 2 parts. The first review will be my (not-so-tiny) munchkin's perspective and then I will chime in with my 2 cents.

Miss A: 9 years old
"I thought the book was cool because the pictures were bright and cheerful. I especially liked the dragon. I think the rhyming made the story more fun. I was a bit confused with the Mandarin characters that were randomly given because there weren't any explanations or even ways to pronounce them. My favorite parts were when the kids threw money around and when the dragon looked around the building with a mischievous look.

I loved the story's message. I think it was saying that even though they're really awesome, you don't need a dragon to be happy.

I give it 4.5 Stars. I would have given it 5 stars if it was longer"

Me: :::mumble, mumble::: years old
I agreed almost wholeheartedly with my daughter...an increasingly rarer occurrence these days. The pictures were vibrant and the rhyming was cute. On the other hand, I found the book's brevity to be a little jarring. It felt like we were just getting into the meat and potatoes of the story when it was cut short. Yes, there was some plot resolution but I felt a little cheated that the story was so succinct. We didn't know that there were other books in the series until we came across what I believed to be a contextual clue regarding tacos. Not having read the previous installments in the series did not negatively affect our understanding or enjoyment of the book.

The moral I got from the story was: who needs a dragon when you're surrounded by loving family? As long as you have Family, you're already lucky and rich... in love.

Overall: this series would be a bigger hit, in my household, if it was a heartier/lengthier story. Maybe we weren't the optimal demographic for this read but we still enjoyed it.

I give it 3.5 out of 5 stars.

*** I was given a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review ***

I enjoyed this book and so did my nephews. I loved the poetry and the illustrations. This would be a great addition to a Pre K-K class in Jan and February. I also love that you can see the context written in Chinese, This is a good book for diversity. It was hard to read as a digital book, but would be great in hardcover or paperback.

4.5 Stars
Adam Wallace’s colorful children book, How to Catch a Dragon, easily explains the traditions of the Chinese New Years to anyone unfamiliar with the culture. The rhymes were fun, flowed well, and would have been easily understood by younger children. The artwork was cute and matched each stanza. My only complaint is that even the ending isn’t what I expected (which I loved) the resolution is a bit rushed.

Hhmmm, I wanted to like this book more than I did. I was a bit confused by all the nationalities of kids in town as it made it hard to figure out where this story was suppose to be taking place. I was also a bit confused by the ending saying they had not caught the dragon, when they obviously had. The translations in the back are great fun, but I wish they said what the languages are. Artwork is cute.

I’ve read a couple of books in the “how to catch” series, but this one felt a little “hard to read”. It took me a minute to really get the hang of the rythym. The overall story was good and I really liked how it incorporated the Chinese New Year! I love the colorful dragons during the Chinese New Year celebrations, so a book centered around catching one was great!

This is a really cute book! I loved the illustrations and look forward to adding it to our collection. I liked how it has the Chinese characters with the English words. Great addition for Chinese New Year.

The "How to catch" series is a really fun one. I've read all of the titles in the series, and have enjoyed them all. They have the same theme, and vibrant illustrations that kids will spend time looking at. These books are great for a quick, and entertaining bedtime story. Coming up with elaborate ways to capture something is an idea that all kids will think about and be interested in.

This book is along the lines of How to catch an elf, and How to catch a leprechaun. The kids are trying to catch a dragon for Chinese New Year but with every step he keeps getting away. This book also has a rhyming pattern. Fun read!

How to Catch a Dragon is a sweet book about traditions that take place during Chinese New Year. Readers follow a young boy as he travels through the city streets attempting to catch a dragon while celebrating the holiday.

I enjoyed this book because it exposes readers to a different culture, but still remains light and child-centric. The rhythm and rhyme are easy to read and do not feel unnatural, which is important to me when reading a book that rhymes. The illustrations are bright, and add to the excitement of the book. Although I cannot speak or read Chinese, I thought it was cool that the text was translated in the back of the book. Overall, I think this book is a winner.

This fun rhyming story of the search for an elusive dragon by a group of children is brought to life with colorful and lively illustrations. Children will love the search for the dragon and the attempts by the children to capture him. This would be a great book for early grade classrooms to read during the Chinese New Year to introduce children to different cultures and holidays. The rhyming format also serves as a great language building activity. Teachers could also connect this to art by having the students create their own dragons and to writing activities by having them brainstorm other ways to catch the dragon. The educational possibilities and extension activities are endless. I definitely recommend this for school and classroom libraries.

I loved this book and can't wait to use it my classroom. When a family begins to celebrate the New Year they need to get everything in order, but they are missing the lucky dragon. I enjoyed the hints at other dragon books, the inclusion of many different colored characters and the fun way to teach children about Chinese New Year.

This is a very odd book, that looks like it was trying to be all things to all people. It appears to take place in a Chinese area, perhaps even China, yet, there are all sorts of ethnicities present. It also seems to be a village.

Each page has a word in English that is highlighted, and in the illsutration on the page, the corresponding Chinese character is drawn.

But there is nowhere in the book explaining that, or giving any background on the calligraphy of the first place

The story is in rhymes, which is never my favorite, and it shows all the things you might find by going to a Chinese new year celebration


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Thanks to Netgalley for making this book available for an honest review.

There's something about these books that makes it really hard for me to like them (even though I really want to). I think it's mainly the meter of the rhyming text. It just doesn't work. And I think I know why:

But this New Year, we're on the watch
to pick up any trail.
Oh wait--is that...? I thought I saw...
It is! A real red DRAGON'S TAIL!

That last line has two syllables too many. And for what? It's a picture book. We can see the red tail. The words "real" and "red" could've been left out, and the verse would've been improved immensely. The meter is like this throughout the book, with random numbers of syllables. I don't really care if the last words rhyme or not; when the meter is this clumsy, it's difficult to read.

An issue I have with this title in particular is the forced diversity. The story appears to be set in China, in an old-fashioned village. The main character is Chinese... but the majority of his friends aren't. The kid states that every year, he and his friends decorate the street for the New Year. Are we to believe that there are a bunch of white, black, and Latinx kids living in a traditional country village in China that appears to have a 19th-century level of technology? (The whole thing almost comes across as a Westerner's idea of China, which is sort of bordering on the offensive.)

I keep hoping that the issues with the meter will be cleared up in these books, but each one I read seems to be exactly the same. There's more to good hymnal quatrains than simply rhyming the last word of the second and fourth lines. The way these are written keeps tripping up my tongue, making me hesitant to want to read them aloud to a child.

ARC COPY...in the great tradition of how to books...hehe how do you catch a dragon. I did like all the technique used in the various attempts do pay homage and contain traditional accuracy of real Chinese new years + the lucky red UNSEEN dragon looks/functions like traditional eastern dragons.

This is a YES for my school library. I work in a Mandarin/English bilingual program. This book hits all the boxes. It tells all the traditions of celebrating Chinese New Year’s as well as has the Mandarin characters and pinyin translations of the story in the back. It would be great to have for both programs. The illustrations are very colourful and well done. A resounding Yes. Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the ARC.

What a cute little story of Chinese New Year traditions, with a fun twist of this group of kiddos setting traps to try to catch a dragon. The art is bright and colorful, and there's a good cadence to the words that would work fabulously for a storytime session.