DRAGONKEEPER: Garden of the Purple Dragon (10+) by Carole Wilkinson

Macmillan, £8.99

CAROLE WILKINSON’S Dragonkeeper series, about a Chinese girl’s attempts to protect the last Imperial dragon, is one of the best adventures anyone over 9 could find.

Ping is a former slave freed by a dragon. At the end of Dragonkeeper, she discovered that the stone she carries was an egg. In Garden of the Purple Dragon, she has a baby dragon, Kai, to nurture and guard. An evil necromancer is after Kai and it soon turns out that he is not the only one. Every part of a dragon can be used for medicine and magic, and every hand may be turned against them.

Hiding in the Emperor’s sacred mountain, Ping struggles to find insects for the dragon, a creature as adorable and as irrepressible as a puppy – and as maddening. Naughty, curious and often rude, he is desperate for food, and such is Ping’s devotion that she eventually gives him her own blood to drink.

She is captured by the Imperial soldiers and taken to the palace where she learns to read from the Emperor’s sad sister. But a bigger danger looms – the young Emperor is obsessed with long life. He starves himself and, worried by the bad omens of failing crops, permits Ping and a servant to go in search of another dragonkeeper. When they find one, neither Ping’s reaction nor Kai’s is what she expected. Deceit and ambition lead to a battle between good and evil.

This series is just the kind of thing that Hollywood should be queuing up to buy. As the success of books from Dragonology to How to Train Your Dragon shows, children love dragons and a Chinese one is even more interesting, as in the East dragons are nature spirits not predators.

Although one wishes that Wilkinson could have come up with a more original name for her heroine (Ping being the name of the duckling in Marjo-rie Flack’s lovely picture-book, The Story About Ping, and also the Disney heroine Mulan’s nom de guerre), she is drawn with tremendous assurance. Wilkinson has done other good books, particularly her series about an Ancient Egyptian prince, but these are future classics. Ping’s self-doubt, her courage, honesty, humility and absolute devotion to her charge make her a delight as she proves herself the true dragonkeeper once again.

The author’s feeling for the Chinese landscape and culture is particularly interesting, given that she is an Englishwoman living in Australia. As Lian Hearn captured the essence of medieval Japan, so Wilkinson conjures a convincing landscape, both cultivated and wild. The bower-like Imperial Gardens, the spring-fed sacred mountain, the harsh cliffs and tangledforest where Ping encounters a tiger garnish an adventure to feast upon.

What’ s more...

DRAGONOLOGY (7+) edited by Dugald A. Steer

The must-have encyclopaedia for dragon-fanciers – shapes, diet, habitat and language.

HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON (8+) by Cressida Cowell

First in wonderful series about Viking nerd and his small, sulky, selfish dragon, Toothless.

DRAGON BOY (6+) by Dick King-Smith

Gloriously funny tale of orphaned boy’s adventures with a dragon family which he turns vegetarian.

THE RELUCTANT DRAGON (6+) Kenneth Grahame

Gentle classic about a dragon who doesn’t want to fight, and a boy who becomes his best friend.

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