Booktalking Colorado - Full Booktalk Record

Booktalking Colorado Full Record:

	Title:	Dealing with Dragons
	Author:	Wrede, Patricia C.
	Date Published:	1990
	Genre:	Fantasy
	Grade Level:	5 - 8
	Booktalker:	Susan Bartel

Booktalk:
Linderwall is a very proper place. The king and queen of Linderwall have six very proper daughters who behave the way proper princesses are supposed to behave. They even look like proper princesses. They have long, golden hair, are very pleasing to look at, and know all about batting their eyelashes. So, after 6 properly perfect daughters, the king and queen of Linderwall were properly surprised with their seventh daughter, Cimorene. Cimorene is lovely enough to look at, but she has jet black hair, is improperly tall, and knows nothing about batting her eyelashes! She also doesn’t care at all for dancing, embroidery, drawing, and etiquette. How improper! Cimorene does try to fit in, but when it all gets to be too much for her, she arranges to take fencing lessons. When her father eventually finds out, he says, “Fencing is not proper behavior for a princess.” When Cimorene asks why not, the answer is, “It’s…well, it’s simply not done.” And the queen adds, “It isn’t proper, dear.” Well, you can see the problem. The same thing happens when Cimorene arranges lessons in magic, Latin, cooking, economics, and juggling. The answer always comes back, “This really isn’t proper.” The last straw for Cimorene comes when her parents, in their attempt to solve their Cimorene problem, try to marry her off to the good-looking, but very dull-witted prince Therandil. Cimorene has to do something! So…following the advice of, what else, a frog, Cimorene decides to run away, stumbles upon a cave full of dragons, and decides to become the princess to one of the dragons. Now, it’s not unusual for dragons to have princesses. What is unusual is that Cimorene has improperly volunteered to be a dragon’s princess. What more improper, she enjoys looking after her dragon, Kazul, and, with the height of impropriety, she turns away all the knights who come to try to rescue her! Her everyday life as Kazul’s princess involves organizing treasure rooms and the library, cooking, some cleaning, and trying to find the hen’s teeth necessary to complete a potion to fire-proof herself in case one of the dragons accidentally gets carried away and lets loose with a breath of fire aimed in her direction! Of course, life with the dragons is far from ordinary and anything but proper! And life gets a whole lot more exciting with the appearance of Morwen the witch, a jinn, a talking bird, a stone prince, and then to top it all off, Cimorene discovers the WIZARDS are hatching a plot to take control of the dragon kingdom. What is the proper thing for Cimorene to do? Well, the proper thing for you to do is to read the book and find out!