What are Reading Dragons & Friends?

Reading Dragons and Friends is a reading incentive program for school age children that rewards them for reading with collectible cards featuring dragons, griffins, unicorns, and more!

Kids can log their reading and participate in special events to earn cards, which they can then use to play games! Children of any age can participate, no library card necessary.

Reading Dragons & Friends is a fun way to motivate kids to build positive reading habits. This program was developed by librarians at the Dover Public Library to try to level the playing field for readers of any ability by rewarding them for the time they spend reading. Kids can struggle with reading because of so many factors. Skills develop at different rates for each person. The goal is to motivate children to read regularly. In doing so they will be building up their reading skills brick by brick at their own pace, and find joy in reading!

How to Get Started

Visit the Youth Desk to get your Reading Tracker and your 3 free starter cards. You will keep this tracker for the full session which runs from September 2025 through May 2026.

To use the Reading Tracker, mark 1 square in the current month for every 30 minutes that you spend reading. Once you've completed 4 squares (a full row, 2 hours worth of reading), you can bring your tracker to the Library and pick out your cards!

The back page of the Reading Tracker shows all of the creatures' eggs that will be released this year. Each month, 4 of these creatures will be made available to choose from. This checklist can help you keep track of which creatures you have collected, as well as which creatures you still can look forward to receiving.

Collecting the Cards

​For each row you complete, you will get a Card Family, which is a set of 4 matching cards: an egg, a baby, a teen, and an adult.

You can only earn 4 sets of cards each month, but don't let that stop you from reading while you wait for the next month to begin! When the new month hits, you can start tracking again to earn more cards.

Playing with Dragons

Dragons love to play, and your Reading Tracker will teach you 2 game styles that are easy to learn and start playing right away.

Each card has a color indicator on the top left and a scoring guide on the bottom right. These designate each card to one of 3 types: Fire (Red), Leaf (Green), Water (Blue)

Scoring generally works as follows:
Fire beats Leaf, Leaf beats Water, Water beats Fire. If both cards are the same type, it’s a tie!
Alternatively, once you start using Card Families, you can let age decide the winner — Adults > Teens > Babies > Eggs. If they’re the same type and the same age, it’s a perfect tie!