Cover Image: Mika and the Dragonfly

Mika and the Dragonfly

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Member Reviews

I loved the illustrations and the ideas in the start of the book. Overall it is a cute story for animal lovers, but it seemed a bit unrealistic that the girl became brave and popular all of the sudden. That has not been my experience working with lots of shy children and could give false hope to students with communication difficulties or social delays.

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⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ (Outstanding)
Mika is a very shy little girl who spends her recess alone because she is too afraid to interact with her classmates. One day, she finds a three-winged dragonfly. She decides she will do whatever it takes to help this dragonfly fly again.

Mika takes the dragonfly home and tries a number of ways to repair the dragonfly's wing to no avail. She takes the dragonfly to school the next day and all the students are interested in her little friend, and they ask her many questions.

Mika's new friend helps her, while Mika helps her new friend. This book is a beautiful story of friendship and compassion, and how when we step out to help others, they in turn help us.

I rated this book as 5/5 stars for outstanding. The characters are caring and children will love them. The pictures are a soft pastel watercolor that are beautiful and engaging.

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My kiddos really enjoyed this one! I thought the artwork was beautiful and loved how the shy little girl, was able to find the courage to talk to her classmates. I did find it a bit odd that she ends up gluing the dragonfly's wing back on. I get that it is a children's book, though, we usually prefer to teach correct principles, even if our children do not understand it. To my knowledge, you cannot, or rather, should not glue back on wings on dragonflies and butterflies. While they do not grow new ones, the broken one can be more of a hinderance than a help. However, they often can fly with a missing wing, so it would have been a nice plot, perhaps, for the dragonfly to fly at the end with her trying to find a solution, but not finding one that worked, because the dragonfly had what they needed all along to fly, just as she had an unknown courage to talk and make friends with her classmates. Again, my children did not particularly mind this discrepancy, so it is fine for entertainment purposes, but I would not recommend it from a logical standpoint or to be used with a nature unit study or anything of that nature.

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Hmmm... This aims to show a girl who is painfully shy at school getting acceptance from the classmates she doesn't know how to interact with, and a girl who does so by virtue of rescuing a dragonfly and – well, that would be telling. It would also be bloody stupid, for the thing she does in these pages is patently ridiculous. I'd appreciate a book that showed in an almost zen-like way that the friends you want and need will come to you in unexpected ways, but not one like this that pulls the wool over the eyes of the young audience. It seems perfectly suitable for said audience, in text and certainly in image, but for the inherent falsity it contains.

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Do you need a spoiler warning for a kid's book? It's only 17 pages, so I have no idea! But, uh, spoilers? Haha. The artwork in this is absolutely lovely, and there's a good message about being kind to insects and making friends. I'm a little unsure about the method of resolution, though: the dragonfly's wing fell off and the kid ends up gluing it back on.

Adults don't take kid's books literally, of course, but I'd just be sure to tell the kid you're reading this to not to attempt gluing a dragonfly's wing back on. I really worry about the dragonflies, okay?! That's my only nitpick, though. Overall it's a very sweet little book and definitely worth picking up.

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Mika and the Dragonfly is a beautiful book about making friends and overcoming your shyness. The illustrations are beautiful and the message is a ver important one. I feel like some details were a little unrealistic, but, nevertheless, a good book for children.

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Such a darling story! Bits of the verbiage seemed a little overdone for children, but I loved how the little girl found courage through her new dragonfly friend. The illustrations were so lovely and whimsical!

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