Kildare Library Service

By Elaine Patterson, Newbridge Headquarters. 

The 16th of January is Appreciate a Dragon Day. ^[i]Since dragons are immensely popular with both young and old, I thought it might be nice to celebrate them with a blog post. As this year’s Appreciate a Dragon Day falls on a Sunday, why not observe the date with dragon related activities both by yourself or with your family or friends (whether in person or via Zoom)? Or if it is easier, simply celebrate Appreciate a Dragon Day a week or two late and keep the 16th January in mind for next year. There are many different low-cost or free things you can do for Appreciate a Dragon Day.

Watch a film featuring dragons. 

You can borrow favourites like How To Train Your Dragon or Raya and the Last Dragon from the library or you can search the catalogue for lesser known films. You could also search lists of dragon film lists on Google, Bing or another search engine, make notes of what titles interest you before checking if any of them are present in the catalogue. 

Read a book or listen to an audiobook featuring dragons. 

Both the library catalogue and Borrowbox have plenty of fictional titles with dragon characters. Quick tip:  in both Borrowbox and the catalogue, type the word dragon or dragons into the search bar and then use the filters to narrow the number of results down- searching through hundreds and thousands of results isn’t fun! For Borrowbox the most relevant filters are age category, age group and genre. For the catalogue, the most useful filters are format, found in, tags and additional suggestions under related searches. Alternatively, you can just search the phrase “dragon books list” or something similar in Google, Firefox or any other search engine to find titles that interest you and then check to see if they’re present in the library catalogue. 

Dragon patterns for hobbies and crafts.

If you frequently sew, embroider, do cross stitch, knit, paint, draw or felt, why not search for dragon patterns online to see if there’s one you like, that you could do that’s within your ability and budget?  Even if you don’t do any of the afore mentioned crafts you can still browse patterns if you want to.  You can also search for creative crafts online that involve making dragons with your family.  

Browse online art and images featuring dragons. 

Because, why not? There are dozens of websites such as Pixabay, Pinterest, Instagram and more where you can look at dragon images. If you decide to do this with your family, you can also talk about which images you like or don’t like. 

Dragon myths and folklore.

You could also search Google or other search engines for myths and legends around the world to read online about dragons.