Review by my dad, after he lost a bet
Dragons and Marshmallows (D&M) is the worst book I have ever read. It has no redeeming value for children or adults. Asia Citro, the so called "author," should be run out of all literary circles. If I believed in banning books-which I, of course, do not-D&M would make the top of my proscription list. But better than banning is to let the natural course of things transpire: in a few years, D&M will be consigned to the dust bin of history. It will be unread, forgotten, and useful only as toilet paper in future pandemics.
To read this book is to loathe your life. So to spare you the trouble, I will provide a brief synopsis. Zoey and her pet cat, Sassafras, stumble upon an old photograph of Zoey's mother holding a magical creature. Zoey can see the creature in the photo, which surprises Zoey's mother. Zoey's mother then reveals that she has been living a secret double life as some sort of magical creature veterinarian. She enlists Zoey into the cause, and places Zoey in charge of the clinic while she attends a conference for a whole week.
Towards the end of the week, Zoey gets her first customer: a dragon! He is abandoned at the back of her clinic like some gangland gunshot victim. He is a baby dragon, and Zoey must perform some experiments to figure out what is wrong with the dragon. It turns out that the dragon needs water, food, and warmth to survive (truly groundbreaking stuff, this book!). Zoey is worried that she has killed the dragon by allowing it to gorge itself on marshmallows-the crisis of the book-only to remember that a balanced diet will save you, and just in the nick of time. After the balanced meal, the dragon recovers from Zoey's marshmallow malpractice, and begins to grow rapidly.
When Zoey's mother returns, the magical vet, her panicky daughter and the world's grumpiest cat spend several days taking care of the dragon (named Marshmallow, due to his near death experience). When Marshmallow outgrows the barn, it is time to take him into the wild. While the magic vet is teaching the dragon to fish, another dragon appears and the two fly off together, presumably to mate. Zoey, her mother, and Sassafras return to the house to roast marshmallows in memory of Marshmallow. The End!
My favorite part of this book was the last page. When reading it, I knew it was almost over, and it could not hurt me anymore. It is difficult to choose my least favorite part- so many to choose from! I found the opening sequence with the rolly-pollies asinine and contrived. When reading the book, I felt like the author was causing me to walk a tightrope (Just like Zoey did to the rolly-pollies). On one side of the tightrope was boredom, on the other side was defeat and squelching on the a bet. I had to keep scurrying through the pages in order to avoid my demise.
But I guess the largest problem with the book is that it is attempting to trick children into learning. It has an ulterior motive. Instead of seeking to entertain, it is trying to hide learning the scientific method in a boring story about a girl and her cat. And just like the child who can taste the vegetables snuck into his mashed potatoes, so can the reader detect the classroom element of this book. In short, this book is a fraud. It is neither fiction nor classroom learning. It is a grotesque mutant. It ought to be hunted and destroyed before it can destroyed before it destroys anymore lives.
I do, however have one suggestion for how this book could have been made better. It is a plot change. I think Zoey should have hypothesized that dragons do not eat girls named Zoey and cats names Sassafras, but then be proven wrong by the dragon's ferocious appetite for homo sapien with a side of feline. Thus would mark the end of Zoey and Sassafras, and the world would be spared from the subsequent books in this series.