Funke, Cornelia. (1997). Dragon Rider. New York: Scholastic.

Book Cover

This was one of my favorite books in upper Elementary years, and I still enjoy rereading it today! The books begins with a worried group of dragons fearing that humans are going to take over their land. The wisest dragon of all, Slatebeard, warns them all to go to the Rim of Heaven in order to stay hidden from humans, but Firedrake is the only dragon who takes him seriously and begins a journey with his brownie companion, Sorrel. Along his journey, Firedrake must find Gilbert Graytail to collect the map, but in the city he must hide away. Here Firedrake finds a young orphan, Ben. Ben wants to help Sorrel get the map. Sorrel is a little leery and sour towards "the enemy kind" like Ben. From then on, the three companions continue on the journey together encountering many characters along the way. Nettlebrand, the villain, and his worker, Twigleg, find out the boy has two of Nettlebrand's scales. In the end, the three companions must discover the secret destiny to save the dragons.
This novel could be used for an upper elementary novel study, in which students perform character evaluations and study the plot. A fun activity that I thought would be good for this novel would be to rewrite a part of the story through the villain's, Nettlebrand's, perspective.
The following is a link to 4th grade discussion questions for this novel: https://multcolib.org/dragon-rider