Dragon Skin

 

I think I may have a new favourite author. I adored Lenny's Book of Everything, but Karen Foxlee's latest middle grade novel, Dragon Skin, is even better. It doesn't hurt that it comes in this gorgeous hardcover package, either, with soft illustrations and silvery inlay. This is a book to treasure and to share.

When Pip finds a tiny baby dragon by the creek, her whole world changes. She discovers that caring for a dragon is a job that can't be done by one person, and she finds some unlikely helpers to assist her, including, in a way, her recently-lost best friend, Mika. Pip is deep in grief, and trapped in fear of her mother's abusive boyfriend, and though Little Fella can't come charging in to rescue her, breathing fire and slashing his talons, he does end up saving her as much as she has saved him.

This is such a beautiful, poignant story, often sad but also luminous with joy. I loved Little Fella, who is like a super-charged puppy, bumbling around and butting Pip with his head when he wants attention, crawling into her arms for comfort, calling out at inconvenient moments when he's hungry. Memories of Mika are interwoven with the present, so that we feel his loss as much as Pip does.

Lenny's Book of Everything was set in the US but Dragon Skin sees Foxlee return to the Mt Isa landscape of her own childhood, a place of mines and dry heat, dirt and galahs, waterholes and Weetbix. Is it too early to declare book of the year?