Yolen says that she is interested in the father-son relationship between Merlin and King Arthur, and she cites The Dragon's Boy (1993) as an effort to depict that relationship. In that story Merlin is called Linn, and he is much older than Artos (a play on the Celtic for bear; in an early chronicle, the leader of the Britons in their war against the Saxons had no name and was referred to as "bear" or "the bear"). In Merlin, Merlin is barely a young adult when he befriends the young Cub (whom Merlin renames "Artus").

Hobby, the second novella in the Young Merlin Trilogy, opens with Merlin at twelve years of age, about four years after the end of Passager. In Passager, Merlin is abandoned in the New Forest when he is seven years old. He learns about survival in the woods and learns to...