Lovely illustrations, a satisfying adventure and such a cute story!

This book…it engaged and delighted my senses. Chocolate and dragons, what’s not to love? Especially when Adventurine experienced chocolate for the first time.
“Lucious, sweet, exotic flavour. Rich and blooming and steaming just beneath my nose. I snaked my long neck towards the fire with lethal speed. ‘What is that?’ ‘Wh-wh-what?’… Bliss exploded through my senses. I reeled with pleasure. Chocolate chocolate chocolate – ‘Ahhhhh!’ and then everything exploded inside me, and the world went black.”
This middle grade book is the story of Adventurine, who is a very interesting, fiesty and courageous dragon, who finds herself becoming human. The experience of this brave dragon becoming a human and discovering chocolate gave Adventurine a new purpose…to become a chocolatier, no matter what it took.
Along the way, Adventuring discovers friendship especially with Silke who is much like Adventurine herself, and Marina the blustery and dedicated chocolatier that takes Adventurine on as an apprentice.
A must mention for me is that I love the names used in the book…Adventurine, Silke, Jasper, and Citrine to name a few. I think the names add to the overall whimsical, adventurous feeling of the book. There is so much the author got right in this book and truly made it a book that was hard to put down.
I think this middle grade novel is a fresh take on dragons, an old-world town and chocolate and will no doubt become a favourite of many children…and perhaps adults too.
If you didn’t love chocolate before reading this then there is a good chance that you will be tantalised by it when you have finish reading it…and perhaps dragons too.

An incredible, multi-faceted read for middle grade readers! Adventurine's journey from smothered young dragon to fierce, independent chocolatier is heartwarming and sweet (pun intended!). As a new human, Adventurine learns about a variety of "ridiculous" human idiosyncrasies. Politics, politeness, money, family pressure, gender roles, and even marketing.

I was not expecting how many topics were covered in this novel, and was pleasantly surprised. This book serves as an excellent start for a young reader in several areas. It's a wonderful introduction to fantasy, with several references to dragon lore (hoarding, scholarship. and even family ties), while also serving as a fantastical coming of age tale akin to Harry Potter in it's emphasis on the importance of friendship and intelligence.

A lovely, lyrical read!

As soon as I started this book I was captivated. It was utterly adorable, feisty and chocolaty - oh so chocolaty! Aventurine is one incredible dragon/kid, and her little adventures with all things chocolate, and her escapades with Silke, were addictive and so much fun! Aventurine is a very important character, and a good role model for kids and adults I would say, as her determination, willpower and hard work to achieve her passions and her dreams is very inspiring - and a lesson a lot of us probably need to have! I will definitely be recommending this book - it had me giggling, desperately craving a chilli hot chocolate, and really wanting to be a dragon.

A pleasure to read. Starting as a dragon tale, of a young dragon determined not to be seen as the baby of the family, Aventurine soon sets her destiny on a new path when she is tricked into tasting a potion that turns her into a human.

The magic encounter also left her with a deep craving and love for chocolate, and she heads for the nearest town where three chocolate houses vie for customers. Can Aventurine satisfy her need for chocolate, and can she ever find her way back to her dragon family and roots?

Aventurine makes an appealing heroine - she is a dragon in human form, Burgis carefully shows the reader how she sees the silly humans around her and stands out from them.

Her story is a wonderful fairy tale with a twist, as she does come across the usual staples of such a story - unexpected friends, some luck and coincidence, adversity, and she of course learns about the species around her and comes to feel differently about them.

And yes, chocolate does feature heavily in the story. It's wonderfully described, as Adventurine does make it inside a chocolate house and we see how the sweets/cakes/drinks are made in a town that feels Elizabethan in context.

Prejudice and stereotype play a role - two ways - the way humans view dragons, and likewise, the reciprocal bad feelings dragons have for humans. Characters from all walks of life are here - those scraping a living in near-poverty, all the way up to royalty.

It's a hugely enjoyable story. My six year old isn't quite old enough for it, possibly, but I'd be happy to read it to him in a year or two - dragons AND chocolate, bound to be a winner.

This has adventure, friendship, humour, good and bad, family, and lots and lots of chocolate. Excellent short novel for primary school readers, ages 8 to 11 ideally.

With thanks to Netgalley for the advance reading copy.

Judging a book by its cover--or its title--has led to many disappointments. But how could I resist a book called The Dragon with a Chocolate Heart? Fortunately, it proved to be utterly charming.

Aventurine is the youngest dragon in her family. She's an engaging character who is fierce, headstrong and passionate. She just wants to explore the world! However, her mother won't let her out of the family's mountain until her scales have had at least 30 years to harden. Of course, Aventurine has never been good at following rules.

The book is intended for a Middle Grade audience and strikes a good balance with the detail it uses. One of the details I especially appreciated was the names of the dragons. Not only are all of them named after gemstones, but Aventurine and her siblings are all named after types of quartz.

This deft use of detail also applies to the depiction of making chocolate. While the story doesn't go through every step in the process, it gives enough of them to feel authentic and doesn't shy away from using specific terminology.

The world-building likewise gives enough detail to feel Regency-influenced while not getting too bogged down in the specifics. The city of Drachenburg comes with as many restrictions as Aventurine's mountain home. It is hard enough adjusting to the physical reality of being a human. However, Aventurine also has to contend with issues of class and rules of propriety that mean nothing to her.

Historical settings, or settings with strong historical influences, can often feature a whitewashed cast. I was pleased to see that wasn't the case here. Aventurine's friends come in a wide variety of skin-tones.

Speaking of Aventurine's friends, friendship is not something that comes naturally to Aventurine. While not solitary, dragons stick to their family groups. That becomes impossible for Aventurine, once she's transformed into an untrustworthy human. Instead, she has to overcome the lessons her family has taught her in order to find friendship. This is no mean feat, because even as a girl Aventurine is constantly assessing those around her for a threat, identifying which humans are formidable predators intent on taking advantage of her.

Overall, I found The Dragon with a Chocolate Heart a delightful read and I'd be keen to see more of Aventurine's adventures with her new friends. However, be warned! This book will leave you craving chocolate.

Dragon with a Chocolate Heart by Stephanie Burgis is a children's novel (the main character is 12ish) about a young dragon that gets turned into a human girl and has to make it on her own in a strange new city. And also chocolate.

Aventurine is the fiercest, bravest dragon there is. And she's ready to prove it to her family by leaving the safety of their mountain cave and capturing the most dangerous prey of all: a human. But when the human she finds tricks her into drinking enchanted hot chocolate, Aventurine is transformed into a puny human girl with tiny blunt teeth, no fire, and not one single claw.

But she's still the fiercest creature in the mountains -- and now she's found her true passion: chocolate! All she has to do is get herself an apprenticeship (whatever that is) in a chocolate house (which sounds delicious), and she'll be conquering new territory in no time...won't she?

This was a delightful read. Sometimes I, as an adult, find books for younger readers a bit too condescending or talking-down to the reader too much, in a way that probably wouldn't have bothered me when I was closer to the intended age bracket. This is absolutely not the case with Dragon with a Chocolate Heart. It's a lovely book that will be enjoyed by children and adults alike.

The story follows Aventurine, a young dragon who's sick of being stuck in her family cave, waiting to grow up so she can safely hunt and fly around outside. One day she decides to experiment with going outside and the first human she meets transforms her from a dragon into a human girl. As well as being traumatic, the transformation, which hinged on an enchanted hot chocolate, awakens Aventurine's love of chocolate. As well as working out how to live as a human, Aventurine becomes fixated on tasting chocolate again.

This book has a lot of delicious chocolate descriptions in it, which made me a bit sad not to be having any chocolate when I read the book. Recommendation for reading: consume with hot chocolate. The setting is a vague Germanic medieval fantasy world, which we don't see much of beyond the city and the mountains. We hear a bit about a few other cities too. The main focus is definitely on the characters: Aventurine and her friends, family and other people she encounters.

Dragon with a Chocolate Heart was the kind of story in which the bad guys are merely annoying rather than actually evil, which was refreshing, especially coming out of having read a few more dire books. It's not that everything always goes well for Aventurine, but nothing especially dire happens and overall this was a very feel-good book. Highly recommended for people looking for a heartwarming read.

I highly recommend this book to all fans of fantasy, dragons and books for younger readers. It is, like I said, written for a younger age group than YA usually is, and I'm not sure that all teens will necessarily enjoy reading about a twelve-year-old. But I think it can be enjoyed equally as much (if not more) but adults (and maybe teens who are less self-conscious).

4.5 / 5 stars

First published: February 2016, Bloomsbury (UK/ANZ)
Series: No.
Format read: eARC
Source: Publisher via NetGalley

Aventurine is a young dragon and horrified at the idea of having to wait until she's thirty before she can go out of the family network of caves and see the world. Until then, her scales aren't strong enough to protect her from humans and their bullets and spells. It doesn't help that her older siblings are utterly perfect - Citrine could speak and write twenty other languages by the time she was Aventurine's age, where Aventurine can only speak six. Their brother, Jasper, studies philosophy and waits quietly and patiently until he can safely leave the cave.

Aventurine, true to her name, isn't one for waiting. She squeezes out of a small bolder-filled tunnel that leads to the outside world - injuring herself along the way, exactly as her mother warned. Furious, Aventurine doesn't let this hold her back and makes her bid for freedom, finally finding herself under blue skies and able to smell food and sets off to prove she can look after herself - if she can manage to hunt and bring something back, this will prove she's more than capable and ready for the outside world at large. Though of course, nothing's that easy.

The plot throughout the book is unexpected, varied, and pretty damn perfect in every way. The expansive character list is easy to keep track of, even though I think it's slightly more than we usually see in a middle grade book (proving it can be done, and done well), and the end, while perfect, made me wish we had more to go on with! I don't want to leave Aventurine just yet.

This is a beautiful and whimsical middle-grade book, absolutely spell-bounding and perfect for a cosy weekend read so you can lose yourself in its pages. I confess I haven't read anything novel-length by Burgis before, though I have read her short fiction that's been in Twelfth Planet Press or Fablecroft collections and I've always commented in these past reviews that her piece in particular has always been one of the few I wish we got to see a novel-length of, because she has a way of introducing us to characters that we then don't want to leave. I wanted to devour this book in a night, but then I also didn't want it to be over so I kept it close, reading a few chapters here and there, drawing it out over a weekend.

Much like the book Chocolat by Joanne Harris is all about the beauty of chocolate, this is the same for younger readers, utterly delightful and leaves you desperate for some good Italian dark hot chocolate - especially if it has a little cinnamon and chilli mixed along in it.