YA Fantasy. Boy finds an egg, keeps it in his room & hatches it into a dragon. He tries to keep the dragon hidden as it gets bigger, esp. from his nosy old lady neighbour who is always at her curtains spying on everyone in neighbourhood. Spoilers.

[Elsie]

I read the book between 2011 and 2014 and it had a yellow cover if I remember correctly. There is an old lady who is absolutely crazy who plays a huge role in the plot. There are also people and organisations who pursue the boy. The story does not take place in one country/location as I remember at one point they were in the amazon/jungle. There is also a big beefy woman who teams up with the old lady. I will expand a bit on this with some spoilers below.

SPOILERS


The old lady finds out about the dragon and at some point accosts the poor boy in the street saying that she has her eye on him or something to that effect. She later tries to expose the dragon and get it killed? But the boy and the dragon escape and other people and organisations also get wind of the dragon and start to pursue them. The old lady then teams up with this big beefy woman who is also after the dragon, I think she is a mercenary/bounty hunter, and they pursue the boy together causing absolute mayhem in their wake. I mean high speed car chases and pile ups with them trying to kill the boy and with the old lady wanting to kill both dragon and boy.

[Rainbowheart]

Anything on the Dragon Egg list?

[Elsie]

No there isn't. But I can tell you that the title was pretty long and that there is no magic in the universe.

[RavensScar]

I have not read this book, but could it be Dragon rider by Cornelia Funke?

[Therese]

Dragonfly by Alice McLerran? Saw someone asking about a similar book on reedit.

https://www.reddit.com/r/whatsthatboo...

[Kris]

Google Books has a limited preview of Dragonfly by Alice McLerran - Therese's suggestion. You might get lucky searching for keywords:

- https://books.google.com/books?id=IoZ...

[Jeremy]

How old is the book do you think? I remember that plotline from a book I read in the late 70s, except what hatched from the egg was a dinosaur rather than a dragon.

It might be The Enormous Egg by Oliver Butterworth.

[Rainbowheart]

Eddie's Blue-Winged Dragon?

[Emily]

Could it be 'Thing'? https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5...

The main character is a girl, and it's not quite as elaborate a plot I don't think, but I definitely remember a nosy neighbour.

[Kris]

Kirkus Review of Dragonfly by Alice McLerran - Therese's suggestion:

- "... three children who bring home a dragon's egg, the grownups are, for once, co-conspirators rather than obstacles. The dragonling that hatches on Jason's little sister Rose's bed doesn't stay a secret for long-but, amazingly, not only are Mom and Dad enchanted with Drac, so are local handyman "Flash" Martin and nosy librarian Amelia Binns. Everyone willingly puts heads together to figure out how to feed and care for Drac, and, most important, to keep her out of the public eye; tasks complicated considerably by Drac's ability to fly, spit flames, and, shedding skins as she goes, grow like a weed. (...) Drac reaches maturity, repays her extended family both with untold wealth-the scales on all those shed skins turn out to be pure gold ..."

[slauderdale]

This is making me think of a book called Weird Henry Berg that I remember reading as a library discard. I’m on my phone so I’m afraid I can’t look more intelligently: posting the title now rather than later, though, because I thought of it immediately, and maybe you can see if there is a an edition cover that looks right based on what you remember. The boy, Henry Berg, names the baby dragon Vincent, and there is an adult dragon who gets ”poofed“ in some way. Description of nosy next-door neighbor lady rings a bell.

ETA: Some of the covers look like they have yellow elements.