Denton the Dragon By Jeff Hutchins

Denton the Dragon in Tales of Bubbleland
Book One: The Last Dragon and Other Tales
Written by Jeff Hutchins
Illustrated by Jerald Pope

Denton the Dragon was born in a cave in the Bubble Mountains, not far from Pingletown, the largest city in Bubbleland. Denton does not know how old he is, though he recalls two summers and three winters. He can remember a pretty dragon smiling down at him when he was a baby. He thinks it was his mother, but he does not know where she is now or what happened to dragons. All he knows is that he has lived alone for as long as he can remember.

When Denton lived in the mountains, he would roar as loud as he could so his roar would echo across the mountains, and he could pretend other dragons were coming to see him. After Little Rachel came to investigate and found Denton living alone, he came to live in her front yard in Pingletown. Now he has many friends, but he still wishes there were other dragons. His favorite color is green, and his favorite food is fried furfels. He is not afraid of anything, but is not fond of spiders.

About the Author:

Author Jeff Hutchins has been honored as one of the Pioneers who helped develop and implement closed captioning, the technology that makes media programs accessible to people with hearing impairments. He helped found and operate VITAC, a great captioning company. He retired from captioning in 2006 and took up writing novels, essays, songs, and children's stories. Born in New York City in 1948, Jeff grew up in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, where his father worked for an oil company. He attended high school at the American Community School in Beirut, Lebanon, where he learned the value of words and an appreciation of natural beauty. He was married to Diane Mahler Hutchins in 1971. They have two extraordinary daughters named Rachel and Nell and two grandsons, Theo and Charlie. Jeff and Diane live beside a lake in Black Mountain, NC.

About the Illustrator:

Illustrator Jerald Pope has a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the University of Tulsa and a Master of Humanities degree from Old Dominion University. As a visual artist, he has won many awards, drawn covers and cartoons for various weekly tabloid newspapers, and written and illustrated several children's books. He says that small-town 1950's mid-America strongly influences the design of Bubbleland.