Jeremy Thatcher, Dragon Hatcher

Tiamat is the dragon that Jeremy hatches and raises. While her birth name is a secret, the name she accepts from Jeremy is “Tiamat,” which comes from the ancient Mesopotamian goddess of the primordial sea. Tiamat is intelligent and curious. She uses images, not words, to communicate with Jeremy via a mental link. She first appears as an egg in Mr. Elives’s shop as a multicolored orb resting on a pillow. She chooses Jeremy to be her Hatcher because she liked his imagination. When she hatches, she has red scales and emerald-green eyes and likes to perch on Jeremy’s shoulder. He feeds her with raw chicken livers and milk, but her rapid growth causes issues for Jeremy as he struggles to keep her fed and housed. As she grows, he eventually keeps her in a barn on his family’s property. Tiamat is also invisible to most of the characters in the book. The only exceptions are Jeremy, Mary Lou, Miss Priest, and Mr. Elives. This general invisibility compounds her tendency toward mischief. In her early days, she chases the cats in the Thatcher house and disrupts an important dinner party with her antics. She is also protective of Jeremy and senses his emotions, leading her to instinctively defend him when he becomes upset. For example she attacks a bully named Freddy and sets Mr. Kravitz’s shoe on fire when he insults dragons and upsets Jeremy. Despite the strength of her bond with Jeremy, Tiamat understands that she must go to her own world to be with other dragons. Although she does leave, the two reconnect through Jeremy’s dreams, and she shows him visions of her new life in her world. This reforged connection emphasizes the idea that true connections, once made, are never entirely lost.

Hyacinth Priest is the children’s librarian at the library in Blodgett’s Crossing. She is described as having long hair and dangling earrings and is a recurring character throughout the Magic Shop series, serving as a kind counterpart to Mr. Elives’s often brusque personality. Despite the differences of these two characters, they are clearly good friends. In Jeremy Thatcher, Dragon Hatcher, Miss Priest’s role is to support Jeremy in his attempts to hatch and raise Tiamat. When Jeremy goes to the library looking for information about dragons, she gives him a book that Mr. Elives has written, and she later reveals that the book is taken from her own collection rather than from the library. Miss Priest’s true nature is revealed toward the end of the story when Jeremy sends Tiamat home on Midsummer Night. Now wearing a daisy crown, Miss Priest participates in the ritual to send Tiamat home by building the gate using eggshell fragments, teeth, and shed skins. Between her role in the ritual, her knowledge of dragons, and the ring containing her own dragon’s tear, it is clear that Miss Priest was once a Hatcher herself. Because of this, the advice and support that she gives to Jeremy comes from a place of personal experience.

Mary Lou Hutton is a supporting character who provides both challenges and support to Jeremy. Jeremy initially tries to avoid her because she leaves him a note on purple paper, confessing her crush on him. Her father is on the school board, and Jeremy’s panic is compounded when his parents invite the Huttons, including Mary Lou, over for dinner as part of Dr. Thatcher’s business deal. Despite her professed crush on Jeremy and his frequent attempts to avoid her, Mary Lou is soon revealed to be a supportive and like-minded friend. She is often the first to check on him when he is upset, particularly after he and his friend Spess begin having issues, and she shares many of the same interests, including a love of animals, reading, and fantasy, particularly dragons. This gives her the ability to see Tiamat, with whom she also forms a bond. As Tiamat grows, Mary Lou begins bringing milk and helping to feed the dragon. When Tiamat leaves on Midsummer Night, Mary Lou gives Tiamat a goodbye hug, and Jeremy can see “that she [feels] nearly as bad as he [does]” (141). The last time she is seen in the story is at the Thatcher family’s Halloween party, where she dresses as a witch.

Mr. Kravitz is Jeremy’s art teacher, and his bullying behavior marks him as an antagonist to Jeremy. The teacher is strict, harsh, and dismissive toward Jeremy in particular. At the beginning of the story, he reads Mary Lou’s love note to Jeremy out loud to embarrass the boy in front of his classmates, and he also shows disdain for Jeremy’s artistic creativity and forbids the boy from creating fantasy art for the upcoming art competition. When Tiamat sets his shoe on fire during class one day, he bans the entire class form participating in the competition until someone confesses to the prank. Mr. Kravitz’s insistence on precision and realism over imagination and his tendency to mete out unfair punishments on a whim lead to tension between him and Jeremy. This dynamic culminates in a confrontation between the two when Jeremy confesses to Tiamat’s act in order to save his classmates’ places in the competition. Mr. Kravitz doesn’t believe him, and Jeremy, driven by frustration and a desire for honesty, confronts his teacher about his unfair treatment. Mr. Kravitz confesses that he considers Jeremy the most talented student he ever had but believes that Jeremy lacks the necessary discipline to pursue art. Jeremy also notices that his teacher’s own art is “accurate, but still and lifeless” (131). After this conversation, while Jeremy remains banned from the competition, Mr. Kravitz wishes him luck for the next year at his new school.

Specimen, whose nickname is Spess, is Jeremy’s best friend. He is a sixth-grade student and is described as having thick glasses and long, dirty fingers. Like Jeremy, he is skilled at art, and the two of them have agreed that if one of them wins the art competition and is allowed to paint the department store window, he will let the other help. In the beginning, Spess is portrayed as a loyal and dependable friend, especially as he commiserates with Jeremy over the actions of Mr. Kravitz and the class bullies. However, he isn’t interested in dragons or books; as Jeremy says, “Spess doesn’t do libraries” (54). Once Jeremy hatches Tiamat and needs to spend more time with her, these differences in interests lead to a widening rift in the friends’ once-strong connection. They begin to have more frequent arguments and start to drift apart. When Spess is allowed back into the competition while Jeremy isn’t, the narrative states, “It was clear Specimen considered Jeremy’s banishment from the contest fair punishment for getting the class in trouble to begin with” (133). Spess wins first place in the art competition in the end, and despite Jeremy’s worry that he will forget about the deal they made, he reaches out in the epilogue and asks him to help with painting the department store window. However, Jeremy ultimately declines the invitation, as he is in an artistic slump following Tiamat’s departure.