Jeremy Thatcher, Dragon Hatcher - 2012 Book #16

Jeremy Thatcher, Dragon Hatcher by Bruce Coville is a story about the boy Jeremy Hatcher who unknowingly ends up buying a dragon's egg when he happens upon a magic shop while running away from bullies at school. Once he discovers that it's a dragon's egg he has, he struggles to figure out how to take care of the dragon on top of other things going on at school. At school, there's a girl who likes him and who has declared her intent to kiss him, there are the bullies from the beginning of the story who continue to bother him, and his art teacher seems to hate him. This last one seems particularly hard for Jeremy to deal with since art is his favorite subject, and no matter how hard he tries, his efforts never seem to be good enough to his teacher.

As the dragon grows, it becomes harder and harder to keep it a secret, not just because of the dragon's size, but by how much it eats and also Jeremy wants to tell others about the dragon. His best friend is curious to know what's going on in his life, and Jeremy's not sure that his friend will believe that he's been raising a dragon, especially since the dragon seems to be invisible to everyone but Jeremy.

This book is a fun, easy read and shows the growth in the relationship between Jeremy and his dragon, but it could have been a lot longer and more in depth. The book kind of skims over lots of time and doesn't go into a whole lot of detail about particular aspects of the story. There could be a lot more character development if the book was a little longer with more added scenes in the times that are just skipped over. But overall, it was a good read.