ACHUKA Book of the Day 29 Nov 2021
“A striking and moving story of love and healing.” Children’s Book Council of Australia
“A magical story about facing your fears and finding the courage to share.” Readings
“A powerful and heart-warming book with an import message.” Canberra Times
A moving story of friendship, family and finding a way to fly.
Pip never wants to be at home nowadays. There’s no laughter anymore and her mum isn’t happy. She spends most of her time alone, daydreaming and digging for treasure by the dirty creek. But one night, Pip finds something incredible – a dragon. Tiny, possibly dying, but definitely a dragon.
She quickly realises that dragons don’t come with instructions: what do you feed a dragon? Where could it have come from? And how can Pip cope with the enormous changes this creature will bring into her life?
The author says about her book, in an interview for Paperbarkwords, “I think Dragon Skin can be read both as simple story and as a more complex one, depending how much you want to delve into these themes. It certainly on one level simply a story about saving a dragon. On another it’s about finding the strength to escape a violent relationship, about toxic masculinity, about love and grief and the transformative power of friendship. Themes never come first for me though. They bubble up to the surface through the writing. At first, I thought I was only writing the ‘saving a dragon’ story, but the more I wrote the more I learned about Pip and what she was facing at home. And I really embraced the chance to add my voice to the conversation we need to have in this country about the epidemic of domestic violence. I was adding my voice in the only way I know how, through story. It’s really important that we talk about these things, discuss them, have them out in the open. I hope Dragon skin is a great read but that it sparks some of these conversations as well.”
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