Monday 17 October 2016

Build the Dragon by Dugald Steer, Jonathan Woodward and Douglas Carrell (Templar Publishing)

Templar's "Build" series of books are always utterly jaw-dropping and this latest title is definitely no exception...you can't go wrong with Dragons!
"Build the Dragon" by Dugald Steer, Jonathan Woodward and Douglas Carrell follows the template of their other build-it titles by offering a truly fantastic book filled with legends, stories, facts and figures about the mythical beasts before letting you loose to build your very own working model of a big red angry looking flapping-winged dragon.

Starting off by browsing the book, we were thoroughly impressed at the quality of the presentation and the illustrations and though we've seen many mythical beast books before, and many books discussing dragons, this book would actually have been good enough to stand up on its own two feet without the aid of a big angry scary cardboard dragon to back it up.

We travel the world, reading about how different cultures interpret the legend of these big scaly monsters, each country having their own distinct and unique 'take' on dragons...


Fire-breathing, lethal, menacing. You really don't want to mess with these fellows
Once you start to build the model itself, you rapidly find that building your dragon is a little more complicated than you might think. You'll definitely need an adult hand as the instructions aren't quite as clear as they could be (some of the illustrations on the instruction sheet are a little small and could do with being a touch clearer). We had a few issues with the build (the whole fragile assembly around the 'flapping' wings just didn't work very well for us at all, and I could see that it'd be the first thing to break after a few uses).

Once it's built though, it does look really impressive standing there menacingly, I have to say!

Dragons across the world, just about every country has its own dragon legends
Those minor build issues aside, it's a fantastic package with both the book and the model offering up a real treat to would-be dragonslayers and dragon fans who love these creatures as much as we do.

"Build the Dragon" is out now, published by Templar Publishing.