Many of the dragon images I’ve seen are quite aggressive-looking, so when I drew this one I softened its appearance quite a bit. After all, I didn’t want our kindergarten kids to be afraid to visit the library.

There was some dispute in my household about my choosing to paint the dragon blue, but I stuck to my guns and I think he turned out quite nicely in the end. To link the theme to the library, I placed a pile of books under his claw rather than the usual pile of treasure.

To involve every student, I drew a couple of flying books and asked each kid to write either their favourite title and author on the cover or the imaginary title of a book they might like to write themselves one day. They had great fun decorating their books, and some went to a great deal of trouble to include publishers’ logos, back-cover blurbs and even barcodes on their covers. I also asked the 6th class kids to make small flames out of cellophane, which I then individually blu-tacked to the wall.

If you’ve been reading my blog, you’ll know that I like to add something to the display every week so that it continues to grab the kids’ attention, so for the first week I painted a large background scene. The second week I added a small fairytale castle to the scene, and next week I’ll add a knight on horseback. After that, who knows? Perhaps a small wood and a wolf?

From experience, I knew that the kindy kids – who were yet developing their skill with scissors – would have trouble cutting out their artworks, so I drew the books and wings as simply as possible. Unfortunately this means that most of the front and back covers are obscured. Mmmm… could have done with more thought.

Part-painted dragon