Kidzworld's Official Blog

This week was all about the fantasy books. Dragon Rider by Cornelia Funke and The Wizard of Rondo by Emily Rodda each offer a great assortment of fantastical creatures–everything from dragons, brownies and humunculus’s to dots, talking pigs and terlamaines.

Dragon Rider is a fantastic adventure novel by one of today’s most popular young adult authors–Cornelia Funke, author of the Inkheart Trilogy. Dragon Rider follows a dragon named Firedrake, a brownie named Sorrell and a human boy named Ben on their quest to find a legendary Himalayan mountain range known as the Rim of Heaven. But trouble is hot on their trail. An evil, manmade dragon named Nettlebrand wants nothing more than to locate the Rim of Heaven and eat all the dragons who reside there. Somehow Firedrake must find the legendary mountain range without leading Nettlebrand to the world’s only dragon sancturary.

The Wizard of Rondo is the sequel to The Key to Rondo by Emily Rodda. The first novel in the series was a little easier to follow and had a more magical feel. The Wizard of Rondo is more like a murder mystery. When cousins Leo and Mimi return to the world of Rondo, they find their friends have deemed themselves a Quest Team. They recieve a letter from a distraught resident in the Hobnob and set out on their first investigation. Wizard Bing has disappeared, and his apprentice, who has been transformed into a giant mushroom, is now in custody of Officer Begood. Someone his behind these mysterious events and it’s up to the Quest Team, along with Leo and Mimi, to uncover the culprit.