Faithful friendships

Talking dragons, brave tweens, and Christian messages figure prominently in Bryan Davis’ The Sacred Scales (Tyndale Kids, 240 pp.), a middle grade fantasy tale that reimagines King Arthur’s Camelot. Eleven-year-old Hawk is an under­appreciated apprentice who discovers a dragon scale, a piece of shimmery skin that protects the wearer and wields mysterious powers. The scale was part of a set, which, if completed, would give the owner eternal youth.

The local sorceress Lady Morgan employs shady tactics to try to steal Hawk’s scale. She imprisons Hawk’s mother, puts Hawk’s friend Sabina under a spell, and even tricks King Arthur into declaring war on the dragons. But the blameless Hawk is Morgan’s foil, fending off her ploys with friendship and faith.

Middle grade readers familiar with the stories of King Arthur will recognize that Lady Morgan le Faye is inspired by King Arthur’s legendary sister of the same name. The benevolent magician Merlin also shows up to help Hawk and Sabina at key moments with potions and powerful stones for every occasion. There’s a satisfying ending, and Davis leaves the door open for a second adventure with Hawk and his new friends.

In The War of the Maps (Abrams, 448 pp.), author Jonathan Auxier offers an epic conclusion to his Vanished Kingdom trilogy. Lead characters Peter Nimble and Sophie Quire rescued a magical kingdom of talking beasts in the first book and bested a fanatical book burner in the second. Now in the third installment, a war between magic and science unravels the no-longer-vanished kingdom and shipwrecks our heroes’ budding romance.

The book’s pacing suffers in the first half as Auxier separates Peter and Sophie to make room for a third wheel, Peter’s sister Peg. But the action accelerates in the second half after Peter and Sophie reunite, ending in a titanic confrontation between chaos and order that is reminiscent of the climax to C.S. Lewis’ That Hideous Strength.

Elsewhere in the plot, beloved secondary characters, such as the frenemy alchemist Ezmerzelda and the furry centaur-cat Sir Tode, resolve their character arcs in satisfying ways. Clever puns and classical allusions abound for alert readers, and the narrator’s dry humor and wry commentary are always welcome. More-discerning readers will be impressed by Auxier’s balanced assessment of weighty real-life issues such as imperialism and political resistance.

A few cautions are in order, however: Late in the book, four sentences suddenly introduce a token transgender character, who is then summarily discarded. Additionally, Peter’s sister unexpectedly reveals that she is “not interested in boys,” but the issue never comes up again. These blink-and-you’ll-miss-it asides are irrelevant to the plot and read like ham-fisted insertions rather than true character development.

In Wiggy Widget’s Marvelous Machines (Doodler Joel, 40 pp.), Joel Stanulonis blends science with art as his lead character Wiggy Widget creates fantastical machines to fix his friends’ first-world problems. When Wiggy, an elephant shrew, receives requests to help his friends, he always answers with a whimsical drawing. For a rabbit bored with his daily commute, Wiggy responds with a blueprint for an amusement park on wheels—complete with a ball pit, gaming consoles, and a pizza and soft serve station. For a young bird complaining about long migratory flights, Wiggy draws a solar-powered jet with first-class lay-flat beds and a swimming pool. Finally, birds can fly in style! For frogs who want more room for their jumping contests, Wiggy conjures up a lunar leap lander that will let them leap six times higher than on earth.

Other Wiggy designs are more practical, like a garbage truck that incinerates its loads into a useful, imaginary lava-like fuel. Although Stanulonis didn’t tie these animal problems and marvelous machines together with an overall unifying story, young readers (including my own children) will have no problem poring over the zany and cleverly drawn inventions. The book might even inspire them to dream up their own designs.