3 July 2002 THE HUNTING OF THE LAST DRAGON by Sherryl Jordan, HarperCollins, June 2002 

It was such an unusual thing for her to do that the memory is astonishingly vivid nearly forty years later: While sitting in a diner in Westbury, awaiting pancakes on a Sunday morning with the family and my grandparents, my mom fished a coin from her purse and stuck it in the mini-jukebox on the wall in the booth. Not at all a "music person," she still felt compelled to turn me on to Peter, Paul, and Mary's new hit song about a dragon named Puff.

I never feared dragons; instead I always considered the hazy possibility that their presence in the ancient lore of so many cultures offered hope that someone someday would turn up evidence that they did, indeed, exist.

Sherryl Jordan has renewed my faith in the possibilities with her dreamy medieval tale of a young man who stumbles into the situation of having to face the last dragon in England. Dictated as a series of recollections by our young hero to Brother Benedict, a monk who methodically inscribes his every word, day after day with quill on parchment, it is a touching tale of imagination and those unseen possibilities, of the clash between man and beast, of the differences between East and West when such great distances really meant something, and of life in an English monastery in 1356.

Our young man is Jude, son of Perkin Swinnard:

"I was thinking on the unfairness of fate, and how I was destined to be ever feckless with a bow, to be ill-proportioned and unhandsome, and plagued with four sisters all younger than I. In that bleak mood I thought on other misfortunes, too: how I was fated to be ever tongue-tied and bumbling with the fair Prue, whose father was the big-fisted miller, hell-bent on saving her from mortal errors such as myself by making her a nun; fated to spend he rest of my days minding smelly pigs, and my evenings keeping the four plagues out of the fire, out of the well, and out of my mother's way; and, worst of all, fated to fall unknown into my grave, my courage untested, my name unsung. In short, I considered myself doomed to a life of pigs and plagues, with no Prue, and no escape."

Talk about teenage angst!

But Jude is destined for a different fate, for while he's off discovering the unusual at a fair in Rokeby--including our heroine, "Lizzy Little-feet, curiosity from the great Empire of China," something has turned his little village into a burnt marshmallow:

"Doran was gone. Burned bare. Trees, wheat, farm carts, ploughs, vegetable plots, sheep, goats, chickens--everything was gone. Only some of the clay block walls of the cottages still stood, and they were black, many cracked and fallen in the heat. Thatched roof were gone, the little wattle fences between the houses, the wooden sheds where pigs were kept, the ploughs and carts--all gone. I recognised nothing, for everything was black. Even the little lanes had vanished, or I could not make them out with fences and gardens and farm buildings disappeared. There was nothing. Nothing but ash and glowing embers, and smoke. And the stink..."

With Prue and his family out of the picture, Jude finds himself in a friendship with the marvelously wise Lizzie, and on a path toward his destiny--a meeting with the dragon.

"Down and down the dragon came, drifting slowly, now and then beating its wide wings. It circled directly over our heads, and I could see wisps of smoke puffing from its wide nostrils. Its amber wings seemed parchment-thin and smooth...But the rest of the beast glittered with scales, multicoloured and coppery, sheen of tawny gold shot through with purple and turquoise and orange. Even through all my hate and fear, I thought that it was beautiful."

Oh, how I long to have been there, and, oh, to have been there, and be faced with Jude's dilemma!

During my years of teaching preschool, I got to share that dragon song with a new generation of dragon-fanatics. I love the two additional verses, added years later, that I'd learned from Amber McInnis' version on Music For Little People's "Family Folk Festival":

"Jackie he got married, and they had a little babe.

Jackie's daughter Sophie went adventuring one day.

Happily she wandered down the misty beach alone.

And passing by a hidden cave, she heard a muffled groan.

Bravely Sophie slipped into the place where Puff did dwell.

The startled dragon spun around and frightened her as well.

Then she saw his lonely eyes, and quickly lost her fears.

She kissed the dragon's scaly nose and wiped away his tears."

THE HUNTING OF THE LAST DRAGON is yet another poignant story from Sherryl Jordan (whose last two books--RAGING QUIET and SECRET SACRAMENT--have permanent spots on my bookshelf). Long live the dragons!

Richie Partington

http://richiespicks.com

BudNotBuddy@aol.com