"The Last Dragon" by Dan Totheroh is a children's fantasy novel written in the early 20th century. It follows siblings Johnathan, Janet Jane, and Peter Baxter, their intrepid Grandma, and two dogs as they befriend a gentle, blue‑eyed dragon—the last of his kind—and ride him back into the Dark Ages. The tale sets up a quest to save the enchanted Princess Silver Toes from the rival dragon Dallahan, aided by a prickly
cave-gnome named Crubby. The opening of this story finds the Baxter children staging Arthurian games in a meadow beside a mysterious woodlot, where six-year-old Peter wanders into a cave and awakens a kindly green dragon who calls himself the last in the world. After the children warm to him (and Grandma welcomes him), their mother drives him away, and their father can’t see him at all; but before dawn the dragon taps at the nursery window and carries Johnathan, Janet Jane, Peter, the dogs, and Grandma (who floats down in her rocking chair) on a headlong ride “backwards” through history. They pass scenes from the past, reach a volcano so the dragon can “eat fire,” and retire to his vast cave home, where they meet the tiny, bossy Crubby. He reveals that the dragon’s enchanted companion, Princess Silver Toes, has been stolen, prompting the dragon to tell her backstory—from silver-dipped toes to a witch’s spell and a storm-swept escape. Learning that the kidnapper is Dallahan, the Irish dragon, the group resolves to rescue her and hurries to an armorer on the king’s highway, where Grandma, the children, and even the dogs are fitted with mail and swords, setting the quest in motion. (This is an automatically generated summary.)
Susan E., David E. Brown, Sue Clark, Rod Crawford, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from images made available by the HathiTrust Digital Library.)
Reading Level
Reading ease score: 81.1 (6th grade). Easy to read.
