A little boy goes on a quest — into two very different forests — to discover the truth about dragons. “You must put your favorite cloak around your shoulders and your sturdiest boots upon your feet,” Julie Leung writes in her Caldecott Honor children’s book, The Truth About Dragons . “Leave on a day when the air is crisp as new paper, the wind is gentle, and the skies are clear.
” In the first forest, full of old, gnarled oak trees, the child evades mischievous hobgoblins, mossy bridges, glowing will-o’-the-wisps, and winding brooks before arriving at a yellow cottage in the middle of a boggy swamp. There lives a wise woman who tells him the truth about dragons. “Dragons are fearsome and fire-breathing, my child,” the wise woman says, “with wings like a bat’s and the body of a lizard.
Piercing horns grace their reptilian heads.” And that, for sure, is one truth about dragons. But our hero still has another journey to go on.
“The book was inspired by my firstborn son,” explains Julie Leung. “We had debated a lot about which last name to give him. My husband having a very common Americanized name that's synonymous with a soup company, and me having one that's always been traditionally a little harder to pronounce.
” Leung was grappling with the idea of her son growing up feeling like he needed to choose between cultures — his mom’s Chinese heritage or his father’s American heritage. So she turned to folklore. “There's such different inter.