Dragons in a Bag

Dragons in a Bag
by Zetta Elliott
Recommended Ages: 8+

Jax's mother needs somewhere to stash him during her day in court, so she brings him to the apartment of an eccentric, older lady Jax has never met before. Mama calls her "Ma," though she's no blood relation. Everyone calls her that, and she says she's raised many kids though none of them were her own. Ma reluctantly takes Jax for the day, but it's clear it isn't the best timing for her. You see, Ma's a witch, and she's just taken delivery of a package containing tiny creatures who need to be moved to another world – a world with more magic than modern-day Brooklyn.

Ma wonders out loud whether Jax might like to be her next apprentice. He isn't sure how ready he is to experience weird stuff like interdimensional travel, especially when something goes wrong with their transporter (a gatehouse at the entrance to Prospect Park) and Jax inadvertently leaves Ma alone in the age of dinosaurs. But a sense of responsibility comes over him, and he recruits old and new friends to help him, and sets out on the beginning of an adventure involving super-smart squirrels, talking rats, and scaly critters that grow like ganbusters when they're fed sweet treats.

This is the first book of a (currently) five-book set, which continues with The Dragon Thief, The Witch's Apprentice, The Enchanted Bridge and The War of the Witches. If it suffers from anything, it's from the sense that it isn't a complete story, and that perhaps the whole quintet is really one story that's been hacked into five books by a greedy publisher that hasn't, apparently, learned anything from the Harry Potter phenomenon about kid's willingness to plow through a thick book if the story is on point.

Canadian-U.S. author Zetta Elliott is also the author of the "City Kids" quartet (starting with The Phoenix on Barkley Street), several standalone novels such as A Wish After Midnight and The Ship in the Garden, and some collections of plays and poems. In her acknowledgments at the end of this book, she explains that in this series of books, she set out to build a magical fantasy for young readers around urban settings and characters of color. I think it might just work; but as I said, I'd prefer to hold a complete story in my hands.