The Language of Spells - Garret Weyr

The Language of Spells starts out a bit slow for its target demographic. While I really liked the description of dragons and why Grisha is special, or not, it took a while to build to the actual premise of the book - namely, Grisha's meeting a young girl named Maggie, who is about to change both their lives. Maggie doesn't show up for several more chapters and her absence is felt by a dragging plot line that involves Grisha being turned into a teapot for almost a century.

Once Maggie and Grisha meet up, the story turns into one of friendship and trust, with a slight sinister undercurrent of something rotten in the city of Vienna when it comes to the control and handling of dragons. I also liked the descriptions of magic and the "rules" for either seeing the dragons or not seeing them depending on one's openness to magic.

This book belongs to my 8 year old and I knew he was struggling to get through the first couple slow chapters so I asked him to borrow it and returned it to him with a note thanking him for letting me borrow his book. I got a very sweet note in return and a promise to talk about the book with me when he was finished. It's the simplest way I know to encourage reading. Both my kids love being read to and reading stories together is a really important part of our evening, but getting them to also be independent readers is important to me because one day, I want them to choose to pick up a book.

A book like this one with complex themes of love and sacrifice, choices made by a child protagonist is just the ticket to getting some of those discussions started, I just have to get him over the initial hump of a couple slow chapters.

3/5 Stars.