Snort: A Dragon's Tail / Tale

By Paddy Hall

So… people have made a mess of things as usual, and the Valley is cold and cheerless.

The last Red Dragon is born, snorting and pale pink in a damp cave, unable to make fire, melt glaciers and usher in spring.

Can Snort together with his only friends, three heroic mice Shallwe, Whatif and Doit, reach The Great Attenbird who has seen it all from the top of the mountain? Can they take direction from Corvid 20 and Corvid 20A the know-it-all Jackdaws, glean some truth from Cummins and Govins the slippery lizards of the ice kingdom.

Will Scarlett and Vulcan, the ancient Red Dragon parents, live long enough to be proud of their only child and hear the birds sing again?

Will a tired and angry band of children do a better job next time? Not all these questions are answered inside these covers, but some are…

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Oct 31, 2022
• ISBN: 9781398457737

Paddy Hall

Paddy Hall was born in 1945 and has been telling stories to his brothers and sisters, family and friends, people in the street, with a bit of fire eating, in schools and on conference floors—basically to anyone who will listen, for many years. He earned a living mostly in education, as a drama teacher, youth worker, vice-principal, Ofsted inspector, consultant, governor and broadcaster. He now sits on Boards of Trustees in Education, Health Care and Wildlife Conservation. This is the first story he has written down. He lives, surrounded by dogs, cats, parrots, chickens and fish in Yorkshire with his long-suffering wife, Marti and near enough to his children and grandchildren to read or tell stories, whenever they visit. The illustrator, Nicola Spencer was born in 1990 and currently lives in East Yorkshire. She graduated from Glasgow School of Art, in 2012, with a BA Hons degree in painting and printmaking. She is a freelance artist and illustrator and has had her artwork exhibited in several galleries. Nicola has worked on a variety of published children’s books, book cover designs, and a comic book and Snort is her most recent project. Nicola has a love of depicting animals in her illustrations and wild birds seen in nature are a constant source of inspiration.

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