She\u2019s bookish and friendless and barely speaks in public. Her sole companions are the imaginary dragonflies that silently guide and encourage her. Faced with the prospect of a yearlong move to New York with her parents and brothers, Guppie finds her anxiety manifesting as a frightening dragon only she can see. Inspired by a teacher\u2019s advice, Guppie draws up a checklist of heroic qualities in characters from books and sets herself the task of acquiring them. But over the course of their road trip, Guppie discovers that becoming a hero and standing up to that dragon might be harder than she thought. Can she really become \u201cGupta the Brave\u201d if she\u2019s hiding from her \u201cso cheap, it\u2019s embarrassing\u201d parents the fact that she got her brothers involved in a social media contest to win coveted cell phones? The brisk pace falters in the middle, and an abrupt transformation at the end feels unconvincing, but Deen\u2019s engaging tale explores finding courage and embracing challenges, as well as noting the difference between hearing and listening. Guppy, with her wry voice and sarcastic commentary, is a likable narrator; readers will become invested in her troubles. The Persauds\u2019 strong bond shines through in their amusing banter and the siblings\u2019 reactions to their mother\u2019s tall tales and overprotective nature. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
She\u2019s bookish and friendless and barely speaks in public. Her sole companions are the imaginary dragonflies that silently guide and encourage her. Faced with the prospect of a yearlong move to New York with her parents and brothers, Guppie finds her anxiety manifesting as a frightening dragon only she can see. Inspired by a teacher\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":4072,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4071","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4071"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4071"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4071\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4072"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4071"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4071"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4071"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}