Literary Dragons

In my page Books to Read, I recommended the book Polly Wants to be a Writer: A Junior Authors Guide to Writing and Getting Published by Laura Thomas. I want to tell you just a little more about the book because I extremely enjoyed it, and I am pretty sure you will too. This book is about a girl, Polly who wakes up with a dragon in her bedroom. The smelly, snakelike, alibino dragon named Scrum, is a huge critic of Polly's writing. Polly seeks help with her unruly dragon with Ms. Whitford, proffesinal draogon trainer and author. While Polly struggles to write a story from start to finish, she becomes part of a plot that could result in no writers.  Ever again.

This story is a great read for kids who want to be writers because unlike most writing textbooks, this one is a great novel, like the ones that you normally read. This also has small tips that get absorbed very quickly. Afterreading this story of the slef -doubting girl you will find yourself saying," If Polly can do it, why can't I?"

The literary dragons that Polly has in her writer's world is supposed to represent that tiny voice inside our heads that tells us while looking at something we had just written," You're stupid, that's no good," or," Why do you even bother being a writer? You're horrible." Everyone has experienced this before. And although this can be helpful in judging story lines or the technique of our writing, it can be disastrous in first drafts or just thinking in general. 

After reading this book, I designed my one literary dragon to represent the voice in my head. My dragon was so critical of my writing during 3-5 grade that I only wrote to do schoolwork. Here is a picture of what I think my literary dragon looks like:

His name is Draco, whom I named after my 2nd favorite character in the Harry Potter series AND it means dragon. Go figure. He is very slippery, often disappearing and then reappearing just when I think my idea is good. WHY DRACO, WHY? But I've learned how to train him, at least. 

I got this template from the website Doll Divine. Here is the link if you want to create your own literary dragon!     

http://www.dolldivine.com/dragon-maker.php