"There is something incredibly nostalgic and significant about the annual cascade of autumn leaves." — Joe L. Wheeler --

"Listen! The wind is rising, and the air is wild with leaves / We have had our summer evenings, now for October eves!" — Humbert Wolfe --

My Father's Dragon

Title: My Father's Dragon

Author: Ruth Stiles Gannett

Rating: ★★★★☆

Age Category: Middle Grade

    Back Cover Synopsis: 

    A group of lazy animals on Wild Island have captured a baby dragon and put him to work. The little dragon can fly, so they are forcing him to act as a flying ferry across a dangerous river. The dragon doesn't like it. 

    So goes the story that reaches a kind-hearted boy named Elmer Elevator ("my father"). Elmer, carrying a bag of most unusual supplies, sets out on a secret journey to rescue the dragon. How Elmer uses these supplies to beguile the nasty inhabitants of Wild Island and free the dragon is one of the most exciting adventures ever. 

"No spring nor summer beauty hath such grace as I have seen in one autumnal face." — John Donne, The Autumnal --

Sonnet 21 by William Shakespeare

Sonnet 21

by William Shakespeare

So is it not with me as with that Muse

Stirr'd by a painted beauty to his verse,

Who heaven itself for ornament doth use

And every fair with his fair doth rehearse

Making a couplement of proud compare,

With sun and moon, with earth and sea's rich gems,

With April's first-born flowers, and all things rare

That heaven's air in this huge rondure hems.

O' let me, true in love, but truly write,

And then believe me, my love is as fair

As any mother's child, though not so bright

As those gold candles fix'd in heaven's air:

Let them say more than like of hearsay well;

I will not praise that purpose not to sell.

"At no other time (than autumn) does the earth let itself be inhaled in one smell, the ripe earth; in a smell that is in no way inferior to the smell of the sea, bitter where it borders on taste, and more honeysweet where you feel it touching the first sounds. Containing depth within itself, darkness, something of the grave almost." — Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters on Cézanne --

"Why did dusk and fir-scent and the afterglow of autumnal sunsets make people say absurd things?" — L.M. Montgomery, Emily's Quest --