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Dragon rider

This is a book of  a warm-hearted dream, written by Cornelia Funke. Cornelia Funke was born in 1958, in Hamburg, northern Germany, and grew up in Dorsten, a little town in the middle of Germany. She is a writer and Illustrator, when she couldn't get good stires to illustrate, she started to write them herself.

Firedrake, a brave young dragon, his loyal brownie friend sorrel and a lonely boy called Ben are on a magical journey to find the legendary place where silver dragons can live in peace for ever. With the help of a map and the whispered memories of an old dragon, they fly across moonlit lands and sea to reach the highest mountains in the world. Along the way, they made new friends ahead and fought old heartless monster behind, who was from the past and has been waiting for a very long time to destroy the last dragons on earth.

From the map we learned that Firedrake's journey started from The Valley of the Dragon in Scotland, they crossed the Mediterranean sea, and Middle East, then to Himalayas, the highest mountain in the world, where the Rim of Heaven lies.

In a letter to her fan,  Cornelia tells how the Dragon Rider was written, and said, "Only by writing such a big book did I learn that your characters can develop a life of their own - and that a truly adventurous writer lets them show you the way."  This is quite right indeed. This makes me thinking if  blogs have the similar characteristics, when you keep updating your blog, then will the blog pull the author around?

This book was supposed to be used for a TV cartoon show, the TV producer asked Cornelia to stretch a dragon story, but Cornelia said, "you can't just stretch a story", since the author (and maybe readers, too) would be awfully bored by just adding things. Can we also apply  this principle to a blog? If we just keep updating without taking notices of the contents and your audience's interest, will you and your readers become awfully bored too?

Forgive me of not sticking to the topic. Now lets come back to the dragon. The word 'dragon' comes from the Greek word, drakon, meaning 'enormous serpent'.  In Western cultures, dragons are nearly always seen as bad, they are incarnations of evil, but in Asian cultures, dragons are forces of anture and most of them are symbols of good luck and loved by all.

There are many dragon stories around the world. In England, the most famous story is about St George battled with a dragon to rescue a young lady - and in doing so he became the patron saint of England, even though he was originally a Roman soldier.
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www.CorneliaFunkeFans.com

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