Frolicking in the Winter Mist

December 29 2014

Leonard Lipton was inspired by Ogden Nash's poem Custard The Dragon. The inspiration led to his poem "Puff The Magic Dragon" which led to the song, with music penned by Peter Yarrow. This led to the hit song by Peter, Paul and Mary.

Almost 50 years later a book of Puff, the Magic Dragon was made, illustrated by Eric Puybaret. I like the song, I even like the illustrations, overall the book is a bit lame. The song isn't long enough to be an interesting picture book, there is only so many times a person wants to say "frolicked in the autumn mist in a land called Honalee". It does come with a CD, so perhaps it works if you read it whilst the music is playing. Linus is mildly intrigued by it. I think it cost £1 as an add-on on Amazon, and includes a CD, so about worth it. It did lead me to discover that there are quite a few versions of The Tale of Custard the Dragon available and that is far more entertaining.



Our return to Jon Klassen's  I Want My Hat Back led to us naming all the characters in it. We came up with Frog the frog, Turtle the turtle, Snake the snake, Bunny Rabbit the bunny rabbit, Bear the Bear, I forget the rest! I do love reading this book, no idea if Linus likes it.

For close, we returned to another old favourite Toddle Waddle is another illustrated by Nick Sharratt and probably not one of Julia Donaldson's most difficult writing exercises. Great fun, if a little on the young side for the chap.