BEST-SELLING AUTHOR JANE YOLEN

COMES TO DARK HORSE!



JUNE 1, NEW YORK, NY–Jane Yolen, the best-selling author Newsweek called “The Hans Christian Andersen of America,” comes to Dark Horse with her upcoming graphic novel, The Last Dragon. Painted by legendary fantasy artist Rebecca Guay, The Last Dragon is a textured and lyrical story of adventure, homelands, and heroism the hard way.

Two hundred years ago, humans drove the last of the dragons from the islands of May. For two hundred years, they have gone about their lives, fishing and farming, never expecting the great wyrms to return. But now, the last of the dragons has risen, and the islanders must once again band together in the face of a threat greater than any their peaceful lives have prepared them to battle.

“I have written a lot of girl power novels, stories, and picture books over the last forty years,” says writer Jane Yolen. “They have won awards like the Nebula (for the novella ‘Lost Girls’) and ALA Notable Award (for the folk tale collection Not One Damsel in Distress), the Golden Kite (for the collection of original fairy tales The Girl Who Cried Flowers), the Jewish Book Award (for the Holocaust novel The Devil’s Arithmetic), and others.” Yolen continues, “But nothing has been more fun than working on The Last Dragon, about the daughter of a healer who shows a reluctant hero how to fight the dragon that has killed her father and terrorized her village."

Artist Rebecca Guay adds, “The Last Dragon, and the vision that Jane and I have for the book, will have all of the fiercely imaginative elements that drew me to comics in my teen years (and kept me reading them as an adult). We are given a hero on a mission of self-discovery and a heroine who leads him to his true path; love and falling in love; mystery, history, glittering and fantastic; and, at the fiery heart of it all, the gorgeous, dangerous, and inevitable Last Dragon.
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The Last Dragon features story by Jane Yolen, with art by Rebecca Guay, and joins the ever-growing line of Dark Horse books for young adults in 2010.