Scholastic's American cover for Dragon Rider
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Author | Cornelia Funke |
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Original title | Drachenreiter |
Translator | Oliver Latsch (2000), Anthea Bell (2004) |
Cover artist | Don Seegmiller |
Country | Germany |
Language | German |
Genre | Children's, Fantasy, High Fantasy |
Publisher | Dressler |
Publication date
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1997 |
Published in English
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September 2000 |
Media type | Print (Paperback) |
Pages | 536 pp |
ISBN | |
OCLC | 38090719 |
Dragon Rider (original title: Drachenreiter) is a 1997 German children's novel by Cornelia Funke. Originally translated by Oliver Latsch, Dragon Rider was published in 2004 by The Chicken House in the UK and Scholastic Inc. in the US, using a translation by Anthea Bell.Dragon Rider follows the exploits of a silver dragon named Firedrake, the Brownie Sorrel, and Ben, a human boy, in their search for the mythical part of the Himalayas mountain range called the Rim of Heaven to find a safe place for Firedrake's kin to live when the dragon finds out that humans intend to flood the valley where he and his fellow dragons live.
Firedrake is a young dragon who lives in a hidden valley outside of London with other dragons. After realizing that humans intend to flood the valley and the dragons living there are no longer safe, Firedrake sets off with the guidance from the eldest member of his clan to avoid the "Golden One" and to find the Rim of Heaven, a legendary location that is a safe haven for all dragons.
Firedrake travels to London with his friend Sorrel, a forest brownie, to find Gilbert Graytail, a rat who specializes in making maps. Not long after landing at the docks of London, Firedrake saves an orphan human Ben from dockworkers. Ben, in repayment for this, then provides Sorrel with human clothes so she may go in disguise to find Gilbert while Firedrake stays hidden. After finding Gilbert and providing payment, Gilbert hands over a map leading to the Himalayas, marking dangerous areas along the way. Only able to fly at night, Firedrake wastes no time wanting to leave. He and Sorrel also decide to bring Ben along with them. After Ben and Sorrel argue about turning East too soon or not, the three end up in a mountain range full of dwarves. Firedrake sleeps while the sun is up and the dwarves wait for him to wake up. While he rests however, one of the dwarves, Gravelbeard, runs to the castle in that same mountain range, revealing Nettlebrand, the Golden One, a fearsome dragon-like monster whose only purpose in life is to hunt, kill and eat dragons and his servant, Twigleg the Homunculus. After hearing of the trio, Nettlebrand decides to follow them, hoping to hunt down and kill the last of the dragons where he failed decades before.
Firedrake, Sorrel and Ben fly onward, but are soon swept off course, arriving on the shore of Egypt. Encountering a basilisk and a band of zealous archaeologists, the party eventually befriends a kindly scientist named Professor Greenbloom. Sorrel is initially suspicious but soon warms up to him. Professor Greenbloom gives Ben one of two freezing-cold metallic scales, which unknown to the humans, once belonged to Nettlebrand. Twigleg relays the news to Nettlebrand, who immediately makes his way to the dig site to find Professor Greenbloom and recover the scales. Meanwhile, the three searchers set out on the advice of the professor to seek the advice of a Djinn, whose thousand eyes can see everything. Ben succeeds in fulfilling the Djinn's arcane requirements with the question: "Where does the Rim of Heaven lie?" The answer to the question appears in two of the Djinn's thousand eyes; it is a path, marked by the Indus River, by a mountain range, and by a monastery. Beyond this monastery is the Rim of Heaven. In the monastery, Ben must break the moonlight on the stone dragon's head. The Djinn also gives them a prophecy: "When that day comes, twenty fingers will point the way to the Rim of Heaven, and silver will be worth more than gold."