The Wizard of Owl Cottage

Some minutes must be kept.

The second tale of The Wizard of Owl Cottage - a warm, old-fashioned fairy tale for readers 8-12, written by a grandfather for his grandchildren and told in the unhurried, wry voice of the classic nursery tale.

Last summer, Sophia, Emma, and Harvey crossed an ancient stone wall by accident. This time, they are invited. A silver acorn appears on Emma's pillow, calling the three children back through the circle for tea at Owl Cottage - where the kettles have names, the furniture has opinions, and a dark door beneath the stairs must never, ever be opened.

But the Warden is called away on an errand beyond the wall. The tall clock by the hearth strikes thirteen. And somewhere in the night, Owl Cottage quietly loses an hour.

While Madam Brindlewake - a very old, very proper, tea-loving dragon - keeps the cottage and the door, the children go searching through a landscape made of time itself for the three true times: First Light, Middle Chime, and Last Ember. Their errand leads them through a dew orchard where mornings are grown, down to a drowned bell that remembers too much, and into the hall between the ticks of a clock, where every door opens onto a different sky.

Because far below the cottage, the prisoner has stolen one small minute. It is only a minute, he whispers. Only a look. Only one little mercy. That, as the children discover, is exactly the trouble.

Dragon Time is a fairy tale about patience, promises, and the minutes we keep - about learning that not all pressure should be obeyed, that anger can break what duty means to protect, and that good keeping takes patience. There is danger of the quiet, whispering kind; courage of the small, stubborn, everyday kind; and comfort of the oldest kind - a lamplit kitchen, a kettle beginning to sing, and a dragon who keeps the fire.

Illustrated throughout with eighteen engraved chapter medallions, and finished with Madam Brindlewake's own stovetop cookie recipe and a nature-lover's glossary of the Fibonacci sequence. Dragon Time stands on its own, but readers of Berry Time will find the promises deepening from tale to tale.

The magic is old. The stakes are gentle but real. And the tea, naturally, matters.