A big shot of childhood joy
When I was a child, one of my favorite authors was Bruce Coville1. I didn't read everything of his, as I was at the mercy of the public library (and this was before interlibrary loans were easy), but I had Into the Land of the Unicorns and Song of the Wanderer2 and would read them over and over again. But the topic of this post is actually a different book of Coville's. This one was an audiobook I got from the library, so I never had my own copy, called The Dragonslayers. The audiobook, on cassette tape, had the book, but it also had a full cast musical production as a bonus, and I loved that musical. But, when we moved away from the library that had it, I no longer had access3, and over time I forgot about it.
Until today.
Today I went to thriftbooks.com, to buy some books I'd been thinking about for a while, and after buying them I scrolled around, looking at some recommended books for a bit, and then saw Into the Land of the Unicorn, which reminded me of Bruce Coville, which reminded me of The Dragonslayers and that musical I had loved ages ago. So I went looking for it online.
Now, youtube these days is somewhat of a curse for me, but sometimes it does good things. Like have the entire musical available to listen to. From the very first notes I recognized it, and it was like no time had passed. I was back in my childhood bedroom, listening to it on my purple Sony boombox while dancing and acting out what I thought the performers might be doing during the songs. I was filled with the good kind of nostalgia, and elation at having found it, and just this pure child-like joy. And for a moment, while listening to The Dragonslayers musical more than twenty years after the fact, everything was all right in the world.
Really, you should look up The Dragonslayers musical on youtube and give it a listen. It's fantastic.
Along with Lynne Reid Banks, Gail Carson Levine, and Patricia C. Wrede.↩
About a young girl who meets a unicorn and goes to a magical land, and this might have been the start to my love for portals to magical places, which feature in an extraordinary number of my writing projects.↩
This is a re-occuring problem. I've lost so many favorites because they were at the library and I don't remember them anymore, and this is why I prefer to own books now. I've recovered two, so far, in my quest to rebuild my childhood reading.↩