When Dragons Cry For Mercy

We love to imagine pretend worlds where magic can make the impossible happen. We would relish that power, if only it were real. Magic intrigues us, which is why fairy tales throughout the ages have used magic as a device to drive the plot. That magic transports us to an unfamiliar world where, immersed, we internalize the messages the story holds.

The original stories in this book are fairy tales, too, and so they embrace magic in their settings and their plots. Dragons, unicorns, fairies, and wizards inhabit the pages of this book. Enchanted toys, roses, whistles, and a dancing marionette delight the reader with their charms. Children fly like butterflies, owls speak in the chill of night, fairies sing their mesmerizing songs, and trees whisper their secrets to a young boy, but these twenty stories emphasize a power that flows from another type of magic, an inner magic—our capacity for love, forgiveness, joy, compassion, and cooperation.

The darkest part of our nature is explored quite thoroughly in our literature. Even fairy tales often show children in the cruelest of circumstances. Yet if our imaginations are like a garden where stories are the water, the sunshine, and the soil for the selves we want to create, perhaps we need the nourishment of stories that invite the reader to reach for the magic within.

Twenty stories. Includes ten black and white illustrations.