I received an electronic ARC from Quarto Publishing Group through NetGalley.
This is a difficult book to review as it was either missing artwork and text on several pages or the simplicity of the red suitcase tumbling and traveling will sail above young readers' heads.
Baum begins the story with dramatic red crayon scribbles on several pages. If you read the blurb, you know this represents a dangerous situation and the little dragon has to flee. He grabs a suitcase but has no time to pack anything. Love this symbolism of bringing your baggage but no tangible items. The dragon travels far and encounters difficult situations - hunger, lonely, tired, overwhelmed. Eventually, he finds a place of safety with others who support him. Love the implication that the other dragon has its own baggage.
I wanted to like this book more than I did. The message got lost with the missing(?) artwork and text. I will look at the finished product and update my review if needed.

This is a lovely children's book, whose story follows a little baby dragon who learns to be comfortable outside his comfort zone, go on adventures and eventually find friends.

It is very easy and fun to read even for adults, and I think that parents and people who work with kids, will find very easy to use it as motivation and encouragement for their little ones.

I can only rate what I can see. Unfortunately, my digital ARC is a mess and missing half of the illustrations. What I did see of them, I liked; I just wish I'd been able to see all of them (especially since this book is light on text and uses the pictures to tell much of the story).

While I appreciate the intent behind this book, I'm not sure if little kids will understand that it's supposed to be about refugees. Again, like so many picture books I've read lately, this one seems to be aimed more at adults than children. We're introduced to a small dragon who's surrounded by scribbly flames (representing danger in their homeland, I guess) and a simply drawn red suitcase. The story is told with the second-person point of view, which is unusual for a picture book, and even more so in this case. (Is this intended for refugee children? Or is it supposed to be for their peers to help them understand the situation?) It looks like the dragon goes on a journey, although I can't really say for sure; those illustrations were some of the ones that were missing. Eventually, they end up in a new land at a new school, where they make a friend.

(On an unrelated note, why is the author's name spelled differently in the book than in all of the material online? Which is it? Gilles or Giles?)

It's hard to say if I would've liked this one any more if I'd been able to see all the pictures, but I don't know that I would've rated it much higher, since I'm not sure if the story's message is clear enough. It might work as more of an allegory, but if children are supposed to understand that the dragon and their journey represent the plight of refugees in our world, it might be asking a little too much.

An atypical story on how finding your safe space may require you to brave the unknown. The little dragon's red suitcase is kind of like a security blanket, and watching all the ways it helps the dragon try new things and make games out of hardships is fun, especially with the cheery child=like illustrations. Definitely a good book for any kid facing a change like moving or starting a new school.

This book is terribly plotted out and doesn't make sense. The illustrations are also sub-par. Very disappointing.

It's hard to review a book where half the pages haven't been properly formatted – several of them were missing the full artwork, or the text, or both. Which was odd, for this is a translation from the French, so surely the art exists in ready-to-present form. What I saw as a preview, then, was quite attractive as far as it went – a cute green dragon and occasionally some bird companions travels with his red suitcase, but it's only towards the end we see the reason for him leaving under a cloud. I'm not sure I liked the translation, for it renders the text in a very imperative mode, where the voice-over orders our dragon to do this, and do that. I was quite ready for the critter to be told to floss, stretch, dance, and wear sunscreen. Other reviews have picked up on the real theme of the book being one too obscure for the young, and I kind of agree – it might have passed me by, leaving this a visually attractive but slightly empty volume. One to give a go from the library, but not a must-buy. But trust me on the sunscreen.

I received an arc of this title from NetGalley for an honest review. I loved the illustrations of this cute little dragon but and I know this is an illustration of what at refuge would go through but I'm not sure that kids will connect well to the story or understand it's significance.

The main problem I have with this good effort to explain how it is like to be a refugee, is that, if you hadn't read the dust jacket that explained how this, then you have no idea why the dragon is going anywhere, just less with an empty suitcase.

<img src="https://g2comm.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/redsuitcase.png" alt="" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-5354" />

Good intentions of trying to explain how it is to be kicked out of your country, to pick up, as though nothing has happened, when in fact it has.

It didn't work for me, though.

Thanks to Netgalley for making this book available for an honest review.

This is supposed to be a story about refugees and the struggles they have in leaving their country and coming to a new one etc, with very minimal text. If I am completely honest, I had no idea that was the message. Even still, I find it hard to find, I don’t think a young child would be able to distinguish it either. It is a good message, but I found it a bit too abstract. But maybe its just me!

Thank you to Quarto Publishing Group for providing me with an ARC.

I was very disappointed in this. Clearly it was designed as a print book, and I'm not the sort of reviewer who is privileged enough to get those, so I get only the ebook. Usually that's enough to evaluate a book for the most part, but in some cases, particularly with children's books, it's inadequate. In other cases - like this one - it's impossible.

The problem was that the PDF version I got frequently got stuck and would not swipe past a certain page without great and persistent swiping efforts. I've encountered books like this before, but they are not common, and what it is exactly which causes it, I do not know. I tried this in both Adobe Digital Editions, and in Bluefire Reader, both of which are excellent ebook readers for the most part, and both of them had the same problems with this book, and on the same pages, too. On occasion, it locked up the reader and crashed it, which is a huge no-no.

The first page to stick was the title page. If you swipe very v-e-r-y slowly, i.e. leave many seconds between arriving at a page and swiping to the next one, it works better, but at any reasonable swiping rate, it sticks. You definitely cannot skim over several pages to quickly get to a specific page, and when it sticks, even tapping on the screen will not bring up the slide bar to navigate quickly. When you finally get the navigation bar and move the little slider along, it takes several seconds to respond and change pages. Sometimes after a swipe I would count slowly from one to twenty before the page would indicate it was ready to move. I had downloaded several children's book from Net Galley for review along with this one, and this was the only one of them which I had this kind of trouble with.

My second problem with this is even more serious and it is that, while I get that this book is minimalist, having merely the outline of the red suitcase - and not even a complete outline on over twenty pages - was too much. or rather, far too little. The book struck me as lazy and even cynical, which went completely counter to the message the book was supposed to be purveying - that of perseverance. This book taught me far more about irritation than ever it did about its stated topic. I lost patience with it repeatedly, and I cannot commend it at all.

I loved the illustrations in this book. I found the doodle style really engaging and like how it can be adapted to show so many different things (the sea, the danger that the dragon runs away from, how the dragon is feeling). I do think, however, that the simplicity of this style requires the text a little more and I think that younger children may lose what's going on in some of the pages where there is no text. A lovely story though and one I would be happy to share with children to introduce ideas of safety and acceptance.

Well, I loved the illustrations. The simple picture were adorable and I just loved the dragon. Maybe it was just issues with my download but some pages all it showed was the outline of the red suitcase and nothing else. If it was supposed to be that way, I just find it odd. If I didn't know the book was about the plight of refugees I probably wouldn't have gotten that. For young students I think the main point will be above their heads. It was a cute story though, and I would love to see more from the illustrator.

A little dragon leaves his home with his little red suitcase. He embarks on a perilous journey to a new home. Here he must learn to be accepted and for others to understand him.

The author has written this to describe the plight of refugees to younger children. There is minimal writing at times which means you can interact yourself and ask and answer questions.
A good attempt to tackle a very sensitive subject.