True Life: I Was a Dragon Book Kid

I tin pinpoint the nonstop time I became a dragon publication kid. It each began successful a Waldenbooks successful the mall. Remember those play days arsenic a kid erstwhile taking a travel to the promenade was the item of your week? I’d beryllium counting down the days until I could walk my quarters connected Mike & Ikes astatine those solid jar candy dispensers, devour a Wetzel’s Pretzel with a Coke, flip done CDs and DVDs astatine FYE, scour Game Time for an elusive Final Fantasy enactment figure, and of course, walk the bulk of my clip wandering the aisles of Waldenbooks.

Oh Waldenbooks, however I miss you.

On this peculiar time successful Waldenbooks, I was having a Hard Time uncovering a caller book. I was 9 years aged and had not discovered the bookish net yet. The grade of my machine clip backmost past included playing Minesweeper and taking attraction of my Neopets. The lone ways I knew however to find bully publication suggestions were done my CosmoGirl magazine subscription, recommendations from household and friends, oregon taking connected the daunting endeavor of speechmaking each the backs of the books successful the autarkic scholar and YA sections of the bookstore.

Having work done countless publication blurbs that time without occurrence and feeling grumpy and dissatisfied, I was connected the verge of calling it quits. It’s a unspeakable feeling to permission a bookstore empty-handed.

It was astatine this precise infinitesimal that my ma passed maine the publication Dragonflight by Anne McCaffrey. This peculiar transcript was the 2002 variation that includes a postulation of gorgeous illustrations by Tony DiTerlizzi (author and illustrator of The Spiderwick Chronicles with Holly Black).

As I flipped done the pages of this book, I felt myself tumbling down a rabbit hole. This communicative whispered of adventures connected a unusual satellite called Pern wherever acerb rainfall called the Thread fell from the sky. Dragons and their riders protected the satellite by burning the deadly rainfall successful the aerial earlier it could onshore and dispersed amongst the vegetation (think the toxic spores successful Hayao Miyazaki’s Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind). In Dragonflight, we conscionable an improbable miss named Lessa who gets chosen arsenic the dragonrider to 1 of the past remaining queen dragons.

Rifling done the book’s pages, I felt an interior tugging towards this story. It’s hard to enactment into words; it’s that feeling you get erstwhile you conscionable cognize this publication feels right. This publication feels similar me. This is the time I became a dragon publication kid. I had discovered my archetypal bookish niche.

Reading Dragonflight felt similar a defining infinitesimal successful my blossoming beingness arsenic a reader. I retrieve coming crossed challenging words portion speechmaking it, similar “nonchalantly,” truthful I kept a dictionary with maine to consult whenever I tripped implicit these caller words. A fewer weeks later, our schoolhouse passed retired the database for our school-wide spelling bee, and I saw that pesky connection “nonchalantly” popular up again. Startled by the coincidence, I reexamined the handout. There astatine the apical laic a enactment that the words had been drawn from nary different than Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonflight. It was a sign. I was meant to work this book.

After devouring galore of the sequels successful McCaffrey’s The Chronicles of Pern, I moved connected to Patricia C. Wrede’s Dealing With Dragons and The Enchanted Forest Chronicles. Christopher Paolini’s Eragon bid and Rachel Hartman’s Seraphina awaited maine next. During my assemblage years, a radical of friends and I adjacent formed a publication nine aft bonding implicit our communal emotion of Eragon.

Becoming a dragon publication kid helped found maine wrong the satellite of phantasy books. It led maine to caller bookish niches tucked wrong fantasy, including fairy communicative retellings and phantasy romances. These began to signifier maine arsenic some a scholar and a person.

Reflecting backmost connected these moments fills maine with some nostalgia and affection for the young scholar I utilized to be. Finding my feet arsenic a dragon publication kid felt monumental and defining to maine astatine the time, and it inactive does. This nudged maine to statesman considering the thought of bookish niches.

While the word “niche” has a fewer antithetic meanings, my exertion of the connection harkens backmost to my precocious schoolhouse days successful AP Environmental Science erstwhile I learned what a niche means successful regards to ecology. National Geographic defines a niche arsenic “all of the biology factors and interspecies relationships that power the species.” When I deliberation of bookish niches, I deliberation of them arsenic the assortment of books, authors, and genres that power idiosyncratic and lend to however they spot themselves arsenic some a scholar and a unsocial individual.

Just past year, my lad pulled each of the books disconnected my bookshelf (as toddlers are wont to do). Sitting contentedly atop a upland of books, helium informed maine that I person “too galore scary dragon books.” Despite the years and my half-hearted attempts to weed my collection, I’ve inactive clung to my dragon books.

Recently, I retold the communicative to my ma of that fateful time successful Waldenbooks erstwhile she recovered Dragonflight for me. She said she didn’t retrieve it precise well. I replied that sometimes inconsequential things we bash tin mean everything to idiosyncratic else. So thanks, Mom. Thanks for suggesting I work Dragonflight. I learned I was a dragon publication kid that day, and I deliberation it’s harmless to accidental I inactive americium 1 now.