So.... Nicky?

I read the title story, "The Smallest Dragonboy," in a school anthology in third grade (I think), and it changed my life. I already read all the time, but it was more a case of exercising my mind; this was the first story that touched my heart. I paid no attention to author's names then, and as the story was mixed in with so many others I probably didn't even learn it.

When I found another story like it, during my SFF binge in middle school, I couldn't believe my luck. By then I knew what authors were and how to use the card catalog, and I read every Pern book in our town library and the county library.

I remember tiring of the books in high school, but never of this story, and I've told its plot to at least a half-dozen others over the years. Thank you, anonymous anthologist, for including fantasy in an elementary-school reader, and especially for choosing this one.