When women were dragons

A hilarious feminist story set in 1950s America where thousands of women spontaneously transformed into dragons, exploding notions of women's place in the world and expanding minds about accepting others as they truly are. • The first novel for young adults from the Newbery Award-winning author of The Girl Who Drank the Moon

Best Book of the Year: BUZZFEED, GOODREADS, and BOOKRIOT

Alex Green is a young girl in a world much like ours, except for one most important event: the Mass Dragons of 1955, when hundreds of thousands of ordinary wives and mothers sprouted wings, scales, and claws; left a trail of fiery destruction in their wake; and took to the skies. Was that their choice? What will happen to those left behind? Why did Alex's beloved aunt, Marla, transform, and her mother not? Alex doesn't know. It's forbidden to talk about.

Forced into silence, Alex must face the consequences of this astonishing event: a more protective mother than ever; an absent father; a disturbing insistence that her aunt never existed; and
Watching her beloved cousin Pia become dangerously obsessed with the forbidden.

In this timeless, contemporary, and reflective novel, award-winning author Kelly Barnhill boldly explores anger, memory, and the tyranny of coercive restrictions. When Women Were Dragons exposes a world that wants to keep women small—their lives and their prospects—and examines what happens when they rise up collectively and take the space they deserve.