Poo-Poo and the Dragons....
...by C.S. Forester. I have the original edition from 1942. Many ecstatic hours of my own childhood were transported up fuchsia flowers....
Poo-Poo Harold Heavyside Brown finds himself in front of his house one Saturday morning, wondering harder than ever what he should do.
"Just in front of him there was a fuchsia bush growing under the window......... and so he wandered up inside one of the fuchsia flowers....."
Poo-Poo befriends a rather dashing young dragon, whom his father decides is named Horatio. Fantastically obscure adventures ensue with the boy and his dragon, as they encounter delightful characters throughout the story.

I read it to Sweary Jr when he was 4 or 5, expecting it to be far too old-fashioned and fuddy-duddy for his tastes (Pokemon, Power Rangers etc.) But he was as enthralled as I'd been 30 years earlier, and requested the reading of it several more times.

How it changed my life?
To this day I cannot pass a fuchsia bush without a surreptitious peek up one of the flowers.....
( Tourette's ( . )( . ) has a monkey hair in her fried egg, Tue 20 May 2008, 21:24, 3 replies)

:0O
I had no idea he did kids books! I've got all the Hornblower books (I wonder what the Horatio link is i.e. Horatio Hornblower).
(Big Smurf Brush me daddy-O, Tue 20 May 2008, 21:58, closed)

Poo-Poo and the Dragons?
Are you taking something? Or was Forester?

;)
( chickenlady b3ta's very own Elizabeth Taylor, Tue 20 May 2008, 22:26, closed)

I'm afraid
That this is all too real - the book is sat in front of me as I type...
( Davros' Granddad a voice of calm reason in a world of spastics., Wed 21 May 2008, 9:15, closed)