My Father’s Dragon – Classic humor for elementary children

This is a classic humor for elementary children about how the narrator’s father and a friendly stray cat go in search of an imprisoned young dragon. On the way deceiving the wild animals who want to stop him or eat him, or both, with cute tricks and traps. Hilarious imagery results as the animals give chase.

May I take a short note and say, we normally don’t post classic books on our main site, but I wanted to again draw attention to the wonderful classic books we have available on our Classic Books page.

This book is one I had not heard of and it’s absolutely adorable for elementary school children, and can make a great bedtime read, chapter at a time, or perfect for reading lessons for readers progressing to chapter books.

Sample Text from My Father’s Dragon – Classic humor for elementary children

Chapter One

MY FATHER MEETS THE CAT
One cold rainy day when my father was a little boy, he met an old alley cat on his street. The cat was very drippy and uncomfortable so my father said, “Wouldn’t you like to come home with me?”
This surprised the cat—she had never before met anyone who cared about old alley cats—but she said, “I’d be very much obliged if I could sit by a warm furnace, and perhaps have a saucer of milk.”
“We have a very nice furnace to sit by,” said my father, “and I’m sure my mother has an extra saucer of milk.”

My father and the cat became good friends but my father’s mother was very upset about the cat. She hated cats, particularly ugly old alley cats. “Elmer Elevator,” she said to my father, “if you think I’m going to give that cat a saucer of milk, you’re very wrong. Once you start feeding stray alley cats you might as well expect to feed every stray in town, and I am not going to do it!”
This made my father very sad, and he apologized to the cat because his mother had been so rude. He told the cat to stay anyway, and that somehow he would bring her a saucer of milk each day. My father fed the cat for three weeks, but one day his mother found the cat’s saucer in the cellar and she was extremely angry. She whipped my father and threw the cat out the door, but later on my father sneaked out and found the cat. Together they went for a walk in the park and tried to think of nice things to talk about. My father said, “When I grow up I’m going to have an airplane. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to fly just anywhere you might think of!”
“Would you like to fly very, very much?” asked the cat. “I certainly would. I’d do anything if I could fly.”

“Well,” said the cat, “If you’d really like to fly that much, I think I know of a sort of a way you might get to fly while you’re still a little boy.”
“You mean you know where I could get an airplane?”
“Well, not exactly an airplane, but something even better. As you can see, I’m an old cat now, but in my younger days I was quite a traveler. My traveling days are over but last spring I took just one more trip and sailed to the Island
of Tangerina, stopping at the port of Cranberry. Well, it just so happened that I missed the boat, and while waiting for the next I thought I’d look around a bit. I was particularly interested in a place called Wild Island, which we had passed on our way to Tangerina. Wild Island and Tangerina are joined together by a long string of rocks, but people never go to Wild Island because it’s mostly jungle and inhabited by very wild animals. So, I decided to go across the rocks and explore it for myself. It certainly is an interesting place, but I saw something there that made me want to weep.”

<End of Chapter 1 of My Father’s Dragon>

For chapter books, we recommend read online in post form here: https://freekidsbooks.org/fathers-dragon-read-online-version/

Otherwise, for the pdf version select the relevent button below the post.

If you are looking for longer books and early chapter books for elementary school, check out our Older Children category.

Snowy Owl – Haiku for older children - Gabriel Rosenstock is back with a great collection of inspiring bilingual Haiku set to thought provoking artwork and photographs, including some issues on child labour in the US. Sample Page from Snowy Owl Gabriel Rosenstock See more from Gabriel Rosenstock on FKB For more about Haiku, see here: https://vcbf.ca/event/about-haiku/. It is noted that while Japanese ...

Make Your Own Mystery Book – MYOB Series - Instead of just reading books together at bedtime, aspiring young authors can now make their own book and share it! Spark imagination with the most popular children’s book genres and learn about story structure and creative writing. In this book, Write your Own Mystery Book, there are intriguing prompts of xxx and much more, to ...

The Whimsical Adventures of Tilly and the Magical Teacup - Once upon a time, in a cozy little cottage at the edge of a bustling town, lived a curious girl named Tilly. Tilly was known throughout the neighborhood for her unruly mop of chestnut hair and a pair of bright, sparkling eyes that held the secrets of a thousand adventures. She was always eager to explore the world around her, but her favorite place of all was her grandmother's attic.

Doggie’s Last Day - A dog’s last day before his owners move home away from the area. Doggie spends his last day saying farewell to his friends and having a final look around the place he’s lived all his life, only to end up with a terrible surprise, and some exciting twists, but will it have a happy ending? ...

World Children’s Day – Words of Wisdom - Children of the world united virtually for World Children’s Day and each submitted a quote, the best ones they made into a book…. note: this is a fictional book Enjoy some words of wisdom and think about how important positive values are.         Read along with the video of World Children’s Day ...

Bulli and the Tiger - Bulli is a little girl growing up in a bamboo-weavers’ community. Bulli finds her father troubled and discovers the bamboo suppliers threatened to raise the rates and put their whole village in jeopardy. Bulli looks for other ways of finding bamboo, and ends up facing the legendary tiger! Will the villagers find another way? Shalini ...

Make Your Own Sci-Fi Book – MYOB Series - Instead of just reading books together at bedtime, aspiring young authors can now make their own book and share it! Spark imagination with the most popular children’s book genres and learn about story structure and creative writing. In this book, Write your Own Fantasy Book, there are beautiful prompts of fairytale castles, dragons, unicorns, fairies ...

Make Your Own Horror Book – MYOB Series - Instead of just reading books, aspiring young authors can now make their own book and share it! Spark imagination with the most popular children’s book genres and learn about story structure and creative writing. In this book, Write your Own Horror Book, there are enchantingly scary image prompts of ghouls, witches, cauldrons, skeletons, and much ...

Make Your Own Fantasy Book – MYOB Series - Instead of just reading books together at bedtime, aspiring young authors can now make their own book and share it! Spark imagination with the most popular children’s book genres and learn about story structure and creative writing. In this book, Write your Own Fantasy Book, there are beautiful prompts of fairytale castles, dragons, unicorns, fairies ...

Coming Out Handbook – The Trevor Project - Sexual identity and gender identity are topics that can involve intense confusion for teens and young adults. Discovering your sexual identity and/or gender identity is the first step that one must undertake and this book helps by first explaining how gender identity and sexual identity are not just black and white – or pink and ...

More classic books are available on our Classic Books page. 

More Classic Tales – CKLA Supplemental Reader Grade 3 - Core Knowledge Foundation is back with more classic tales, this time tailored for Grade 3 reading levels. This classic tale compilation features The Frog Prince, The Fisherman and his Wife, Rumpelstiltskin, The Queen Bee, Rapunzel, Hanzel and Gretel, Beauty and the Beast, The Magic Paintbrush, The Tiger, the Brahman, and the Jackel, and A Christmas ...

The Story of My Life – Helen Keller’s Autobiography up to age 21 - Helen Keller’s Autobiography, written at age 22, and details her growing up, before and after meeting Anne Sullivan, and her years in formal education, both special needs education and afterwards when she was accepted into main stream education, with the help of Ms Sullivan’s translation. The book includes letters written by Helen from the age ...

Classic Stories – Big Book for Early Grades and Kindergarten CKF - The Classic Stories Big Book from the Core Knowledge Foundation includes condensed versions of ten famous classic stories or fables, each includes beautiful illustrations, perfect for reading to kindergarten or early grade children, and suitable for early reading by early grade developing readers. This book is designed for the US preschool / pre-kindergarten (Pre-K) syllabus ...

The Frog Prince – Classic Fairytale Picture Book - This is a beautifully illustrated picture book version of the classic fairytale The Frog Prince, and includes reading comprehension questions at the end. The classic fairytale also has a teaching guide with lesson plans available for Grade 1 students, and reading comprehension questions available at the end of the book. This illustrated eBook and read ...

Sleeping Beauty – Illustrated Picturebook - This is a beautifully illustrated version of the classic fairytale Sleeping Beauty. The classic fairytale also has a teaching guide available for Grade 1 students, and reading comprehension questions available at the end of the book. This illustrated eBook and read online version of Sleeping Beauty is based on the Brothers Grim version of the ...

Aesop’s Fables With Questions - This is a version of most Aesop’s fables for children available with questions. The awesome thing about this version of Aesop’s Fables is that it has comprehension questions for every fable at the end, and the index is hyperlinked thanks to awesome tools available in Adobe software. Unfortunately, it does not have images and text ...

The World I Live In and Optimism – Helen Keller - In The World I Live In – The Practice of Optimism, Iby Helen Keller explains in an amazing and inspiring set of biographical accounts, along with essays and poems what it is like for her in her world. Helen Keller, being both deaf and blind, seeing the world through her sense of touch, displays an ...

The Tale of Jemima Puddleduck – More classic Beatrix Potter - The Tale of Jemima Puddleduck is another classic Beatrix Potter, presented in a unique new way for colourful online reading by Kiwi Opa. Jemima Puddleduck is annoyed because the farmer’s wife will not let her hatch her own eggs. Jemima runs away to find a suitable spot, and meets a ‘friend’ who offers to help. ...

The Snow Queen – Classic Stories - The Snow Queen – Classic Stories – A simple version of the classic tale from Hans Christian Andersen, two friends fight good and evil in an epic battle. By: Hans Christian Andersen and Kiwi Opa     Text and Images from The Snow Queen – Classic Stories In the original story, “the devil”, creates a ...

My Father’s Dragon – Classic humor for elementary children - This is a classic humor for elementary children about how the narrator’s father and a friendly stray cat go in search of an imprisoned young dragon. On the way deceiving the wild animals who want to stop him or eat him, or both, with cute tricks and traps. Hilarious imagery results as the animals give ...

Sponsored Links:

Note – if you sign up through these links, it doesn’t cost you any extra, but FKB receives a small donation, which helps us move towards our aim of
FREE Hardcopies!  

All our posts are checked by Grammarly, the FREE online grammar checker (We still receive a donation even if you only sign up for the free account :-):

This site is hosted by Bluehost:

Leave a comment (it won’t be public) if you want help getting your own website cost-effectively.