Billy and the Dragon

Billy and her sidekick, the amusingly monobrowed Fatcat (dressed as a very cute dragon), are enjoying the buns and bouncy castle at a fancy dress party when a very large REAL dragon swoops down from nowhere and grabs Fatcat!

Rummaging in her hair, Billy finds a telescope and manages to spot Fatcat far away in a tall tree within the Deep Dark Forest: understandably, he doesn’t look too happy about it. So, Billy and her animal friends set off to rescue him. Yet, rescuing a cat from a tree isn’t as easy as you might think – and when Billy finds a small dragon who has got lost, she starts to guess what might have happened…

The second in Nadia Shireen’s Billy books is as delightful as the first. Shireen’s comic timing is first class, and her characters are full of brilliant wide-eyed, hilarious expressions while remaining cuddly, relatable and full of comforting warmth. It’s great to see a brown girl knight defeating the dragon, too.