Two children, Trudy and Jay, find a magic key that suddenly transports them to the world of Low Check, where they team up with three talking animals to destroy the dragons that enslave Low Check.

Trudy (aka Truth) and Jay (aka Justice)

The animals are a dovekie (bird) named Passie, a small monkey named Hai, and a donkey named Lug.

Passie, Hai and Lug

The way the children can get home is to unlock a dragon's "Door of Doom" with a magic key they have, but they don't know which dragon's door matches the key, and there are nine dragons!

Lock to a Dragon's "Door of Doom"

There is a spell over all the land by the dragons that keeps tall people out. This prevents the adults of the City of Reason, where the adventure begins, from hunting dragons. The adults in the rest of Low Check are short, about the same size as the children.

The Magic Key

The donkey has the Magic Key tied around his neck that Trudy and Jay brought to Low Check, which prevents the dragons from using violence against their little group. The dragons' magic spells are ended by revealing their lies. As the lies are revealed and the curse of deception is gradually lifted, the dragons and their soldiers begin to go through a metamorphosis, and when they realize their end is imminent, they try to attack anyway, which results in their destruction thanks to the Magic Key. The dragon's soldiers are formed from the dragon's discarded teeth, so they suffer the same fate as the dragon.

I began working on these stories late in the last century as a way to teach logic and critical thinking to my children. Life got busy, and I did not finish the project. Early in this century, I ran across my writings and began to refurbish them to use to teach my grandchildren about logic and critical thinking. I wrote these eight stories about informal fallacies, and they were successful. (i.e., my grandchildren liked them and did learn from them.)

My experience as a teacher in a homeschool tutoring center made me realize that these stories can be used as a basis for teaching a lot more in-depth. Using my experience as an instructional designer for the training department of an international corporation, I have included materials in a teacher's guide to help if you want to use these stories in that way.

But it is not necessary to use the extra materials for the young readers to begin to grasp the rudiments of logic. Each dragon tells a specific kind of "lie". The Brown Dragon, Quiver, uses fallacies of ambiguity to cast her spells. The Blue Dragon, Track, uses fallacies of distraction to cast his spells. The dragons are defeated by a team of children and talking animals by exposing the nature of their fallacies. The young reader will begin to comprehend these various families of fallacies as they continue through the series of adventures.

Each child is different, of course, so how in-depth you go, if at all, will certainly be a judgment call on your part. It is my hope and prayer that these books will bless many families by helping children learn to think more clearly and communicate their thoughts more articulately.

Good: The young reader enjoys the story and learns some analytical and critical thinking skills.

Better: An adult reads with the young reader and, using resources of their own about logic and critical thinking skills, helps the young reader to learn from the story.

Best: A teacher or parent uses the entire series of books and the Teacher's Guide to teach a course on Critical Thinking.

Try it before you buy it: Download the first chapter of the Brown Dragon here and the corresponding section of the Teacher's guide here.