Books like Dragonsong

A book doesn't have to be Great Literature or even particularly good to appear on my "formative fiction" shelf, it just has to be a book with a meaning that changed me or helped me to understand myself and the world in a new way. Fortunately, Dragonsong is also a very good book of its type.The best friend of my childhood was different from me in many ways: middle-class to my trailer-trash, older, weak where I was strong (he suffered from a heart condition that would kill him while still a teenager), and part of a large and functioning family.We both lived in religious households that discouraged "worldly" reading but, while my folks were strict, his were lax. During a winter holiday sleep-over, he smuggled Dragonsong and some of its many sequels to me. We sprawled in front of the wood-stove and read all day and long into the night. I'd scrimped to save for treats and, feeling very elegant, served us Ritz crackers with Cheeze-Whiz (the big jar!) and vienna sausages. I was so anxious to impress, I put my finger on the side of the stove to show him how long I could stand to sizzle.There were other sleep-overs and other books, but this is was the important one, the one I remember whenever I open a new book and read merely for the pleasure of escape into another kind of life.Menolly, the protagonist of Dragonsinger, escapes in a more literal way. Denied the expression of her natural abilities, she runs away to live independently. She fed my tomboy fantasies by living rough, making her own shelter, killing and skinning a large bird, and taming wild animals. Just when she is settling into her new rustic life, disaster strikes. Finally, her talents are recognized by kindly people who whisk her away on dragon-back to a new community of people who can value her for the reasons she values herself.It is not a complicated story, but it is well-told and the theme is universal. It has resonated in my life as I have tried, with only some measure of success, to find a safe place where my own talents are recognized and friends who care for me not in spite of, but because of who I am. The irony for me, of course, is how that place is located in the past, with that dead boy who loved me enough to smuggle books.