Think of yourself out of your comfy chair and your nice house with the roads and the streetlights outside--and the ceiling overhead low enough that a fifty-foot dragon can\'t stand on her hind legs and not bump her head--and think yourself into a cavern full of dragons.
Her other books include Sunshine; the New York Times bestseller Spindle\'s End; two novel-length retellings of the fairy tale Beauty and the Beast, Beauty and Rose Daughter; and a retelling of the Robin Hood legend, The Outlaws of.
But then Jake notices something even more urgent: the dragon has just given birth, and one of the babies is still alive...
About the Author: Robin Mc Kinley has won various awards and citations for her writing, including the Newbery Medal for The Hero and the Crown and a Newbery Honor for The Blue Sword.
The dead man is clearly a poacher who attacked first, but that will be lost in the outcry against dragons.
Jake knowns this news could destroy Smokehill.
But this dragon is dying--dying next to the human she has killed.
On Jake\'s first overnight solo in the park, he meets a dragon--the thing that he would have said he wanted above everything else in the world.
But they are up to eighty feet long (plus tail) and breathe fire.
Supporters say there is no record of their doing anything more threatening than eating sheep, there are only a few hundred of them left at best and they must be protected.
Detractors say dragons are much too dangerous and much too expensive, and should be destroyed.
But dragon conservation is controversial.
They stay away from the Institute--and the tourists.
Jack\'s never seen one except deep in the park and at a distance.
There are five million acres of the Smokehill wilderness and the dragons rarely show themselves.
Smokehill is home to about two hundred of the few remaining Draco australiensis, which is extinct in the wild.
Jake lives with his scientist father at the Makepeace Institute of Integrated Dragon Studies in Smokehill National Park.
Try.
Go on.
Think of yourself out of your comfy chair and your nice house with the roads and the streetlights outside--and the ceiling overhead low enough that a fifty-foot dragon can\'t stand on her hind legs and not bump her head--and think yourself into a cavern full of dragons
