Four signed copies of my picture book Fire Truck vs. Dragon (illustrated by Shanda McCloskey and published in March 2020 by Little, Brown) are up for grabs in this month’s giveaway!

As I return to featuring Shark vs. Train, its 2010 companion, in my author visits for the first time in many years, I’ve been thinking about students’ inevitable questions and observations about how the two books contrast and compare.

Fire Truck vs. Dragon hit shelves exactly one day before Covid was declared a pandemic, which means my bookstore event scheduled for that upcoming weekend was one of the first plans of mine to be scuttled.

As a result, I sort of skipped over the ideal opportunity to give a talk about Fire Truck vs. Dragon and Shark vs. Train as a pair.

The short version of that, and what I expect to convey to a lot of elementary school students in the months ahead, is that where Shark vs. Train was a series of ridiculous competitions between two characters you would never expect to be in conflict, Fire Truck vs. Dragon is a series of ridiculously thwarted expectations of what will happen between two seemingly conflicting characters.

So, that’s the contrast between the two books. The comparison? Like its predecessor, I’ve found Fire Truck vs. Dragon to be an absolute hoot to read aloud.

But back to the giveaway! Subscribers to my monthly Bartography Express newsletter (folks can sign up here) are eligible for one of those four personalized copies of Fire Truck vs. Dragon.

If you’d like one of the winners to be you, by the end of February 2023 either say so in the comments below or email me directly, and you’ll be in the running. (U.S. mailing addresses only.)

Good luck!