The Boy with No Reflection

Lisa Arsenault is an elementary-school teacher in Ajax.

Born without a reflection and shunned by other children, a boy sets out
to acquire one. He encounters a sorcerer whose magic table contains a
dragon. The dragon agrees to give the boy a reflection if he can guess
the answer to a riddle. Just before the deadline, the boy discovers the
answer and is granted his wish.

The black-and-white drawings, which evoke images of knights, castles,
jugglers and knaves, dragons, and the like, are the best part of this
book. Its promising premise—an absent reflection, with its implicit
questions pertaining to identity and self-esteem—is never fulfilled.
There is little substance to this story. For example, the dragon makes a
great point of threatening the boy with not gaining a reflection if he
fails to solve the riddle, but this is hardly the dire threat the author
intended it to be; logically, the boy would simply be back where he
started and would have lost nothing. This fact reduces the impact of the
challenge theme, which is central to the plot. Unfortunately, this is a
superficial addition to the fairy-tale genre. Not recommended.