Dragons Love Tacos by Adam Rubin

Hey, Story Seekers!

I have an important announcement.

Dragons love tacos.

Apparently this has been going on for years and nobody thought to tell me.

They like big tacos. Little tacos. Chicken tacos. Beef tacos. And if you're planning a party, tacos are an excellent way to get dragons through the door.

There is one rule.

No spicy salsa.

Seriously.

Don't get cute with the jalapeños.

Dragons Love Tacos is written by Adam Rubin and illustrated by Daniel Salmieri. If you're new to Book Explorers, I'm Jungle Jimmy the Book Explorer, children's author, dad, and longtime performer for kids. Readit the Book Worm is my childlike expedition partner, and he would like to know why we're spending so much time discussing dragons when there are tacos available.

Priorities.

Book Breakdown

The book talks straight at a young boy and gives him some extremely important information about dragons.

They love tacos.

They also love parties.

Which leads to the obvious conclusion.

Taco party for dragons.

The narrator explains how to prepare. You'll need a lot of tacos, because dragons do not believe in reasonable serving sizes.

But keep the spicy salsa away.

Dragons hate spicy salsa.

Unfortunately the salsa situation gets complicated. The boy has tried to provide mild salsa, but there's something hiding in the fine print on the jar.

Spicy jalapeño peppers.

Uh-oh.

The dragons eat.

The dragons notice.

And then we all remember something important about dragons.

Fire.

Daniel Salmieri has a lot of fun with the fact that Rubin discusses dragons as though they're perfectly ordinary party guests. These aren't terrifying beasts looming over a kingdom. They're goofy-looking creatures attending a party, eating tacos, dancing, hanging around the house, and reacting rather strongly to dinner.

Salmieri also lets the pictures answer questions the narrator asks. That matters, because this isn't words with dragon pictures underneath. The narrator talks and the illustrations occasionally talk back.

Which gives kids something extra to watch while you're reading aloud.

Dial published it on June 14, 2012, and it became a number one New York Times bestseller.

For teachers and librarians: Ages 3 to 7, preschool to grade 2, Lexile AD520L, ATOS 3.1, 501 words, AR quiz 152991, 0.5 points. The AD prefix means adult directed, which is the publisher telling you this is a read-aloud before it's a solo read.

One note on page count: Penguin Random House lists 40 pages and AR BookFinder lists 32 for the same ISBN. I'm not picking one, because a number nobody published is worse than no number.

Jungle Jimmy's Journal

This book understands something useful about performing for kids.

If the ridiculous thing is funny, stop explaining why it's ridiculous.

Commit to it.

Dragons love tacos.

That's the fact.

Rubin doesn't spend three pages on where dragons discovered Mexican food or how they hold a taco with claws.

Good.

We have more urgent business.

Like salsa.

The narrator talks directly to the kid, which hands the read-aloud a nice trick. You're not standing outside the story reporting what happened.

You're letting them in on important dragon information.

I'd read the warnings seriously.

Not cartoonishly serious.

Actually serious.

Because the more you behave as though keeping spicy salsa away from dragons is basic household safety, the funnier the whole thing gets.

And the kids know what's coming.

That's the other reason it works aloud. Once the spicy-salsa rule is clear, every child in the room is waiting for somebody to blow it.

Then they spot the jar.

That's a very good page-turn.

I also like what happens after everything goes spectacularly wrong.

The dragons don't slink off.

They help rebuild.

No speech about responsibility. No lesson parked in the middle of the story. They made a mess, they pitch in.

And yes, there are more tacos.

Of course there are.

Readit's Review

WHY WOULD YOU LEAVE THE SPICY SALSA ANYWHERE NEAR THE TACOS?

Put it in another room.

Put it outside.

Give it to a neighbor.

It says there are spicy jalapeño peppers in it!

Also, if I had that many dragons at my house, tacos would not be my first worry.

Where are they all going to sleep?

Can they use the bathroom?

Do dragons even use bathrooms?

And there are SO MANY TACOS.

I like the tiny ones best.

I would try one.

Not the spicy one.

I was paying attention.

What Others Think

A lot of people have attended this taco party.

Goodreads has Dragons Love Tacos at 4.20 out of 5 from 24,938 ratings across thirty editions. That's a large reader history for a picture book built on one strange piece of dragon knowledge.

The reaction that comes up over and over is how well the silliness lands with young kids, particularly aloud. Readers describe children asking for it again, quoting it at each other, and enjoying the collision of dragons, tacos and one catastrophic ingredient mistake.

The grown-ups are not unanimous.

Kirkus was distinctly unimpressed. Its original review found the story cheerful but too slight, and thought the premise never went far enough.

That's fair, and I'm not going to bury it because the book is popular.

This is not a complicated story. Dragons like tacos. Dragons hate spicy salsa. Somebody makes a salsa mistake. Boom.

If you want a picture book with layers to unpack afterward, this isn't the one I'd hand you first.

But nearly 25,000 readers suggest the simplicity is the point for a lot of families. The setup is instantly graspable, the warning is easy to remember, and kids can see the disaster coming from several pages away.

Sometimes knowing the train is coming is most of the fun.

Especially when the train is a dragon full of jalapeños.

Belly Laugh Scale

4 out of 5: Big-Time Belly Laughs

The central idea is wonderfully stupid.

I mean that as praise.

Dragons loving tacos is funny before the story does anything with it. Add their total inability to handle spicy salsa, an enormous taco party and Salmieri's casually ridiculous dragons, and you have a read-aloud with several places where kids see the joke coming and enjoy it anyway.

I'm stopping at four because the joke is simple and the book rides it hard. Kirkus isn't wrong about that.

For a lot of kids it won't matter one bit.

They'll want tacos.

They'll want dragons.

They'll want you to read it again.

Check the salsa label first.

Final Explorer Verdict

I'd hand Dragons Love Tacos to preschoolers, kindergarteners, first graders, dragon fans, taco fans, kids who like absurd humor, and anybody who wants a read-aloud that doesn't need fifteen minutes of setup before the fun starts.

For kindergarten especially, I like it.

The language has repetition kids can grab. The pictures reward watching. The narrator speaks directly enough that a group feels involved. And the whole story runs on one very clear piece of cause and effect.

Dragons plus tacos?

Excellent.

Dragons plus spicy salsa?

Everybody out.

It's also a good reminder that a funny read-aloud doesn't need to drag a wagon of lessons behind it. Sometimes the job is making a room of five-year-olds deeply concerned about a jar of salsa.

This one can do that, which is why it's on our list of funny kindergarten read-alouds and our best books for 5-year-olds.

And if what your kid loves is knowing more than the characters do, watching that salsa jar creep toward disaster while everybody on the page stays cheerful, that's the same engine I built Look! There Are No Dinos Inside Of This Book on. Dangerous Dave is certain there are no dinosaurs. The kids can see all of them.

Readit is now asking whether we can review the book again at an actual taco restaurant.

Nice try.

Until our next expedition, keep exploring those books.

Jungle Jimmy & Readit