The Crouching Dragon

The Crouching Dragon is an enchanting fable of fantasy, adventure, ancient history, romance and competition . In a small French town in 1959, William and his friends help create a half-fantasy kingdom out of the mysterious castle called the Crouching Dragon. In the castle they help in restoring a hidden Kingdom, discovering real medieval artifacts. The teenagers solve a mystery of puzzling disappearances in their town with the help of the President de Gaulle.

My only problem with The Crouching Dragon is that it kept me up all night reading it. This is one of the best adventure stories I've ever read, with characters I really care about and one surprise after another. What a terrific ending. I guess I'll just have to read it again while I'm waiting for the author to deliver the next book in the series.

I really loved reading The Crouching Dragon. We need more heroes that we can follow, not comic book ones like Xena or ones like Buffy fighting enemies that don't exist in the real world. Both my brother and I loved reading the book and since he is in 4th grade and I am in high school, anyone over age 8 should love this book too. We both have read the Narnia books and the Harry Potter books, but the heroes in those books need magic to overcome their enemies. The great thing about The Crouching Dragon is that the heroes beat their enemies by banding together and supporting each other instead of needing magic. Another great thing is that one of main characters is a woman who does not have to act like a man to be a hero. I love to read history and I want to go to Europe as soon as I can so I loved the parts of this book that described France in such detail that I felt like I was there.

The crouching dragon is a wonderfully imaginative book, with extremely realistic characters and setting. It kept my attention with every turn of the page, and never ceased to surprise me. The description of the setting paints a very realistic picture of the wonderful landscape of France.

As ELA Curriculum Coordinator k-12 at Cairo-Durham CSD I have ordered five copies for our "Reader's Corner" designed to have students read for pleasure. It will rivet their attention with the constant action. I am also investigating ordering a class set for interdisciplinary study. Social Studies can investigate the three time periods of William the Conquerer, WWII, and the reign of Charles Degaulle. English classes would rewrite different endings and discuss the moral dilemmas involved. Art would investigate the paintings mentioned as well as the architecture of the dragon and the period it was built. Music would investigate lute music and technology could work on recreating a lute or a medieval breastplate.Math could work on the metric system. French could investigate the culture of the region. Depending on students' ability level a distict could use this 8-10. For adult readers there is an incredible amount of action as well as a great picture of theCalvados region of Normandy. I always looked forward to travelling to Omaha Beach, however; now I've got to budget more time to see the entire region. Although the ending depends on a great deal of coincidence, it doesn't detract from the overall quality of the book. I learned a lot, and it was a truly pleasurable read