By K. O'Neill
Tiny dragons grow tea leaves out of their horns, and a blacksmith's apprentice is taught how to look after one.
Greta is learning her mother's trade at the forge and quietly wondering whether anyone still needs a blacksmith. Then she finds a small lost creature in the marketplace and carries it home to its owners, and that's how she meets Hesekiel and Erik, who keep a shop and the last two members of the Tea Dragon Society. Tea dragons are palm-sized. They grow tea leaves from their antlers, and the tea brewed from those leaves carries the memories of whoever tended them. Greta is taught to care for one. That's the plot. Four chapters, one per season, and by the end she has a friend named Minette and something to belong to.
Most dragon books hand your child a dragon and then put it in a war. This one hands them a dragon and asks them to feed it. When your child loves dragons but not danger, that's the whole thing they've been looking for and haven't been able to name. It's short, it's soft-colored, and the pages are so pretty that a child who doesn't consider themselves a reader will go through it twice. The dragons here are also inventive, not just lizards with wings, which is what wins over a child who's already read everything with a dragon on the cover.