The world is full of mistaken egg picture books, but what makes this one stand out for me is the humor of the teacher's exasperation with her student for being "difficult" for protesting that the dragon egg she was given wouldn't work for their school science project on baby chicks. It also has nice lessons about friendship and loving people (or dragons) as they are.

I read this unique dragon story aloud to a group of second graders and they laughed. The teacher character is a bit marmish, but it's a fun read, especially for a class.

I read this unique dragon story aloud to a group of second graders and they laughed. The teacher character is a bit marmish, but it's a fun read, especially for a class.

Sally and her class are doing a science experiment. They each get an egg to observe and record data on. When the eggs hatch, Sally's chick, Argus, looks different from rest. As Argus grows he causes lot of trouble but Sally continues to love and take care of him. Through this story, students are shown how things can be observed and how to collect data from those observations. ( )

Argus is a book about a girl, Sally, who gets a different egg in science class that hatches a dragon, Argus, instead of a chicken. I appreciated that this book showed the process of the children incubating and caring for their eggs. Also, the students tracked the chickens and one dragon's growth by measuring and weighing them, eventually showing that information with graphs. Making the story silly was an interesting way to show that process.
The illustrations are cute, showing the growing dragon becoming more and more destructive as he grows. ( )