If I Had a Gryphon

“If only I could have a pet with strange, exotic powers, I know that I’d find lots to do to while away the hours.”

If I Had a Gryphon by Vikki Vansickle and Cale Atkinson

Do you have a child that is obsessed with animals?  I do!  He loves anything that creeps, crawls, or flies.  He has ever since he was a baby.  Our cat is one of his very best friends and he wants to keep every puppy that he meets.  Well, you take that kind of love for animals and you pair it with a large imagination and a love for fantasy and you get someone just like Sam.

Sam is a little girl who received a hamster for a pet.  However, she is completely underwhelmed.  She has been reading a book called “Mythological Creatures” and she is soon daydreaming that she has a magical pet instead.  It isn’t long in her imaginings before she realizes that there is a downside to every creature that she thinks up.  For example: If you have a sasquatch you’d spend “three hours a day attacking snarls and burrs” in their fur. If you have a kracken you would need a “scuba suit in order to survive”.  If you have a dragon with “a temperamental snout” you would need a fire extinguisher to “put her sneezes out.  And the list goes on and on.  In the end she decides that she is perfectly content with her fuzzy hamster after all.

This book is one that will have your little one in stitches of giggles.  I love the rhythm, humor, and descriptiveness of the text.  Plus, it rhymes!  The illustrations are not to be overlooked either.  I’m in love with their vivid colors and playfulness.  This one really does make it on my list of Top Ten Books so far in 2016.  (I think it also appeals to me a bunch because I am a huge animal and fantasy lover so every time I read something like “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them” I turn into a little Sam and I want some of them for pets! Hey, picture books aren’t just for kids!)

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