Quest kids and the dragon pants of gold by Mark Leiknes

Ned, the narrator, is the brave and noble leader of the Quest Kids, whose journal has been discovered by J. B. Lucastoothe, curator of a museum and the Quest Kids manuscripts. The story opens with the Quest Kids trying to remove the pants off a dragon...

Let's go back a little... Ned is a typical village kid, although now he is the Leader of the Quest Kids. He is joined by his best friend Gil, who is.... sort of... a wizard, the 700-year-old elf Terra, Boulder the gentle rock troll, and their dog Ash. Pig dog? Who breathes fire? Well, some kind of dog. Maybe. Well, anyways, they are experienced adventures... kind of.

Really, they have no idea what they're doing, but they've only got each other and Ned's desperate desire to Save the World, at least the town, well, maybe the girl from his old village he met. They set out on an impossible quest, buoyed up by Ned's leadership (and, unfortunately, a number of lies) and encounter disaster, boring elves, aggressive creatures, and a giant golden monster. Will Ned come clean to his friends? Will he discover clues to the mysterious disappearance of his parents and Gil's wizard-master? Or will he get yet another village burned to the ground through ineptitude and false bravado?

Black and white illustrations decorate the pages of this fantasy, notebook-novel style, with hilarious illustrations of the group donning life jackets for "Crazy Larry's Acid Swamps of Doom Adventure Lines," the gold sweatpants-clad dragon, and the climactic battle with the golden rage-beast. There are the obligatory lessons about being honest with friends, as well as an unexpectedly mature discussion of making your own choices in life, even if your parents don't agree, as well as plenty of fart jokes.

Verdict: This is likely to appeal to fans of Cowell's How to train your dragon and Brallier's Last Kids series. The quest aspect may also click with young Dungeons and Dragons fans and the combination of humorous illustrations and text will pull in readers as long as they're ok with goofy humor. It was also nice to see that, although the main character is white, the creator did not completely default to the predominantly white cast of medieval/feudal fantasy.

ISBN: 9781454946250; Published September 2022 by Union Square Kids; ARC provided by publisher and passed on to my beta-readers (aka the D&D kids)