Cornelia Funke – Die offizielle Homepage

Dragon Rider

Ever since Cornelia wrote Dragon Rider, she has been a mad collector of dragons – stuffed dragons, paper dragons, china dragons, small ones, big ones, green ones, red ones – but there is still not a single one in her collection that can fly like Firedrake.

Everyone who knew my first dog, Rico, will know that Firedrake looks a little like him. But Rico also couldn't fly. I wrote Dragon Rider because flying on a dragon was the one thing in life I really wanted to do and I knew that writing about it was the closest I would probably come to the actually experiencing it. So I simply imagined it – something I have always been rather good at.

Besides, the book goes back to some ideas Cornelia used for her very first book "Die grosse Drachensuche". Someone wanted to make a series out of it and asked her to make the story a little longer. Well, you can't just make a story longer and so she decided to write it anew and in a slightly different way. While she wrote that new story she didn't feel like turning it into a TV series anymore and so now there's just the book.

After Dragon Rider I kept coming up with ideas for thicker and thicker books. And I learnt that longer stories quickly gain a life of their own.

And there was one more reason to write Dragon Rider. Cornelia wanted to draw dragons and all the strange creatures that live with them.  She can still smell all those mushrooms brought by children who knew how much Sorrel likes to eat them. And then there is Twigleg, the manikin. Of all the creatures Cornelia invented he is still one of her favourites. And she had so much fun drawing the sea serpent.

Since Dragon Rider had been published,  Cornelia has received countless letters and emails from readers, who wished for a sequel. Thus, Cornelia swung herself up on Firedrake's back again to find out, how Ben and the Greenblooms and all the others have been since their last adventure. So she entered the fabulous world of  Mimameidr and all its fantastic inhabitants.

Have a safe flight and exciting journeys with Firedrake and his dragon riders!