Dragonsong (1976)
Dragonsong is a 1976 harper hall book written by Anne McCaffrey.
Music runs through everything Menolly does, and in Half-Circle Sea Hold that is a problem. Fishing folk have no use for a girl who makes songs, her father least of all, and with the gentle old Harper gone, her songs are forbidden outright. So she runs: out past the safety of the hold walls, where Thread falls burning from the sky, and into a seaside cave claimed by a clutch of tiny fire lizards. Anne McCaffrey's 1976 novel opens the Harper Hall trilogy, a gentler road into Pern that trades dragonrider politics for one stubborn girl and the craft she refuses to give up.
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A few thoughts on Dragonsong
The fire-lizard bond lands the way Toothless does in How to Train Your Dragon: a dismissed kid, a misunderstood creature, a friendship that rewrites the rules. Kiki's Delivery Service and Moana share the leaving-home-to-earn-your-gift arc, Song of the Sea has the same salt-and-myth atmosphere, and the bard game Wandersong turns singing your way through danger into a playable mechanic.
Misfit kids who bond with impossible creatures
Menolly's cave full of fire lizards is the heart of Dragonsong: a girl nobody values, a clutch of creatures nobody has tamed, and a bond that changes both. These stories run on the same current, from a Viking boy hiding a wounded dragon to a selkie sister who barely speaks.
Leaving home to prove your gift
Dragonsong turns on the night Menolly walks out of Half-Circle Sea Hold rather than give up her music. Every pick here follows the same costly choice: a young witch flying to a strange city, an island daughter defying her father, a bard singing his way across the map.