Child of the Dragon Mountains

Nine sons of the dragon

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The author painted the cover illustration in oils. It illustrates a shaman from the main painting in Battle Cave in the Upper Injasuti area. This book is an adult historical adventure novel.

The book deals with the twilight years of the Bushmen San living in the Natal Drakensberg mountains. They were a late stone age people. The novel begins with the birth and childhood of the boy! Bo, and tells how his growing capabilities are honed, first by his mother and then his father and other noted artists and shamans of the Ndedema. Bo becomes an experienced hunter, artist, shaman, and rainmaker.

Married and with children to raise, he becomes increasingly aware of the pressures placed on the San by outside communities engaged in wars, territorial conquest, and vengeance against cattle raiders in the San communities. His own family rejects the rustling of livestock from encroaching farms. He comes to understand that the clans and communities of the San are facing genocide. Much of the book deals with the endeavours of the main character and his family to preserve and nourish the cultural heritage that is their lifeblood, while striving vainly to unite diverse San clans and groups into a unified political force they hope will engage constructively with the aggressors.

Loss of life amongst the Ndedema community leads! Bo on a fruitless quest to Bulihawu Giants Castle. After the loss of their children in a misdirected, punitive raid mounted by stock-farmers, his family embarks on a lengthy and traumatic venture down the Senqu Orange River to engage with Soai, a noted leader amongst the cattle raiders; also Chief Moorosi and the cattle-raiding Amatola.

Once Tashi Met a Dragon

The debilitating aftermath of the Langalibalele Rebellion also engages and almost overwhelms his family. Reading the book is a novel way of gaining insights into San life and behaviour during a critical time in their history, within the geographical confines covered by the book. The period is portrayed as a time of great political and cultural upheaval.

Many San abandoned their past Stone Age culture as they experienced and sometimes attempted to imbibe the encroaching Western frontier culture. Download a Tashi's Dancing Shoes activity sheet. Download a Tashi Wordsearch.

Make your own Tashi stand. The pictures in this story book are just beautiful. The illustrations really paint a wonderful picture of the country side, villages, the people who live here and of course Tashi and the dragon. I really enjoyed reading this story to the children in my kindergarten class as it was interesting, funny and told a tale of great courage and how important it is to help others. Once Tashi Met a Dragon begins with Tashi riding on a white tiger to the top of a mountain to see why the dragon is not sending rain down into the village.

The legend states that once a year the dragon will send smoke and thunder down the mountain and then the rain would follow. But there was no rain, the skies were blue and the village was becoming very dry as there is no water in the creeks, so the people of the village are very hungry. No one has ever seen a dragon but Tashi believes he is there and when he meets the dragon, he discovers a very sad and angry dragon, who just wants his mum to wake up. The dragons mum is under a demon spell and no matter how hard the dragon tire he cannot wake her.

Tashi and the dragon need to work together to help each other. This is a great book about helping others and making friends. As a class we made our own dragons and displayed them in the class room. We also brainstormed ideas about helping other people in need in our community and how important helping others can be. I would recommend this story for children aged 4 and up.

A first glance at this book alerts you to a wonderful story to come. Opening the cover to reveal the lusciously illustrated end-papers had this reader deliberating whether to further savour the richness of the pictures or whether to be getting on with reading the story. The title page too gives more hints of the village setting and so we turn the page to meet Tashi and his Grandmother pondering about the dragon who lived over the mountain and far away. The concept of drought needing rains to restore the landscape is one that most young readers would know from their own life experiences, and this point could be the basis of discussion even before introducing this wonderful Tashi story.

The sheer pleasure of being engrossed in an imaginative and well-written story is enough reason for this book to be incorporated into an early child years classroom.

Dragon Rider (novel) - Wikipedia

This special book lends itself to a number of concepts and language structures for further exploration by the developing reader. Drought, journeys, local landscape, stories that Tashi is familiar with, family; and then the language to convey past-tense, direct speech, adjectives, similes, - all of which contribute to the climax of the story, even after meeting the dragon who ate his own sister! Here is another Tashi adventure, written by the Fienbergs and beautifully illustrated by Kim Gamble.

One day Tashi learns about how the dragons living on the mountain usually bring the rains.

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However, this year the rains have not come. The tiger takes Tashi up the mountain to meet the lonely young dragon. Tashi encourages the young dragon to sing a song which wakes the old dragon. The old dragon then shows her children how to use dragon words to make rain. This is how Tashi is involved in breaking the drought and bringing rain to his home village. This would be a delightful story to read to Grade students as part of a unit on dragons, legends, weather or traditional Asian lifestyles.

For example, the endpapers at the front of the book contain a wealth of detail about how the local people feed themselves, fishing or cultivating fields, using animals to plough the ground or to travel. Alternatively, you could create other legends to explain how thunder is made, or a rainbow.

Using the Australian context, students could may draw what a drought looks like and compare this with a picture of what it is like after the rains have come. As a fan of Tashi, I was looking forward to reading this book. The first thing to grab your attention is the illustrations: This story sees Tashi off on an adventure to meet a fierce dragon to enable the rains to fall again.

The crops are dying and the animals are thirsty. While helping a thirsty tiger, Tashi finds out that the old dragon is not the problem it is a young dragon. Tashi sets out to see if he can convince the dragon to send rain. He finds a young dragon that is very sad. I have used this book as an example for my year six class when writing picture books for younger readers.

It has a good story line, is descriptive in language that it uses and has beautiful illustrations.

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