Puff the Magic Dragon has finally been immortalized in print. It surprised me that a picture book has never been created from Yarrow and Lipton’s famous song, but illustrator Eric Puybaret is the first to bring Puff to life in this format. And the book looks great. It also comes with a CD featuring the song and some others from Peter Yarrow.

I think this would make for a neat lesson with maybe kindergarten. I couldn’t read the book without singing the song in my head, but this might be a first introduction to Puff for the elementary school set. The illustrations are whimsical and worthy of an epic tale of fantasy and friendship. There’s quite a bit of poignance when Jackie Paper grows up, and I like how Puybaret kept this retelling from becoming cartoonish.

PS-I read up about the history of the song on Wikipedia while writing this post. Obviously, it’s well known as a drug anthem from the 60s. But Peter Yarrow and Lenny Lipton have always maintained that it is an innocent song and they never intended the drug parallels. It’s an interesting bit of information about the origins of this song.