Elmer Elevator hears about a baby dragon being worked half to death on Wild Island, so he packs a knapsack and goes to get him. It was published in 1948, it won a Newbery Honor, and it is about eighty pages with a map in the front and a drawing every few pages.
Why it earns read-aloud time
Because it is built out of small wins, and a child who is not sure about chapter books needs small wins more than anything else.
Every chapter is one animal in Elmer's way and one object out of the knapsack that gets him past it. Lollipops for the tigers. A hair ribbon for the lion. Chewing gum for the crocodiles. The pattern is so clean that by chapter four your child has worked out the shape of it, and that feeling of seeing what is coming is what turns a listener into a reader.
It is also short. You will finish it in a week of ten-minute nights, and finishing is the point. A child who has finished a chapter book once will start another one.
The child it lands with
The one who is five or six and gets restless the second the pictures stop. The one who is eight and has decided chapter books are for other kids. The one who needs to be right about something.
Hand this child the map on the first night and let them hold the book while you read.
One place to stop and talk
Before Elmer meets each animal, stop and ask what your child would use out of the knapsack. Read the list of what he packed, then close the book for a second.
They will be wrong most times and it will not matter. Guessing at a solution and then hearing the real one is the whole engine of the book, and it costs you fifteen seconds a chapter.
What to know going in
There is almost nothing to warn you about here, which is rare enough to say out loud. No death, no real menace, no cruelty that lands.
The honest caution is the opposite of the usual one. It is short, and it ends fast, and your child will want more the same night. There are two sequels, Elmer and the Dragon and The Dragons of Blueland, and you should know they exist before you finish this one at bedtime and have nothing to follow it with.
Where to get it
It is on our shelf at My Father's Dragon, and it is the cheapest book on this whole list, which feels about right for the one that opens the door. It sits on the Third-Grade Read-Alouds shelf with nine others worth the hour. It is also on the full list of ten.
If your child liked this one
Books we have written about that sit close to this one, by reading level and by subject.
Animal Scales: Fur, Feathers and the Same Five Jobs
What If You Had Animal Scales!? or Other Animal Coats? by Sandra Markle
Grade K to 3
Animal Teeth: Which What If You Had Book to Buy First
What If You Had Animal Teeth? by Sandra Markle
Grade K to 3
Chameleons Are Cool: The Camouflage Myth, Corrected
Chameleons Are Cool: Read and Wonder by Martin Jenkins
Grade K to 3
Browse every book we have written about by age, by kind of book and by subject: Find the right book for your child.
