Word: eragon
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Strange as it sounds, that particular fantasy story happened. Its hero is Christopher Paolini, a real-life home-schooled kid who lives with his family in a remote valley in the Absaroka Mountains of Montana. When he was 15, Paolini wrote a fantasy novel called Eragon, which has sold 2.5 million copies. And it wasn't a fluke: Paolini, who is now a ripe old 21, has written a sequel to Eragon called Eldest (Knopf; 681 pages), due out this week. The adventure continues...
...Eragon is your basic boy-meets-dragon story. The titular hero is a teenage boy who finds a strange blue stone that turns out to be an egg. The egg hatches into a beautiful, powerful and somewhat sassy blue dragoness named Saphira with whom Eragon forms a telepathic bond. It's an irresistible premise: she's exactly the kind of perfect friend a smart, lonely mountain boy would invent for himself, although Paolini doesn't feel as though he missed out on anything growing up in Montana. "I don't think I'd have written anything like...
Being a prodigy isn't always easy. When Paolini's parents realized they had a teen Tolkien on their hands, they quit their jobs, published Eragon themselves and put Paolini on a grueling tour schedule, from junior high to junior high, library to library. He became the family breadwinner. "As the saying goes, we really bet the farm," Paolini says. "It was down to the point where if we didn't sell enough books, we didn't have food on the table." Isn't that a lot of pressure for a teenager? "You have no idea," Paolini says. "Even though...
CHRISTOPHER PAOLINI At 17, wrote Eragon; it has sold like a hotter Potter...
...just as older kids savor the Harry Potter books, so too may they enjoy the fantasy worlds conjured in Inkheart, by Cornelia Funke, and Eragon, by wunderkind Christopher Paolini. Inkheart is the suspenseful, darkly comic story of 12-year-old Meggie, who discovers the perils of fictional characters' coming to life. Eragon, by Paolini, who is only 19, is a fast-paced adventure tale that takes place in a fully realized alternate universe inhabited by a stew of dragons, swords and dark forces. By next year, you'll no doubt be able to supplement the literary gifts with Eragon action...