Sam and the Dragon

Some research I was doing on children’s book publishers led me to There’s a Dragon Downstairs by Hilary McKay and Amanda Harvey (2005).

Every night Sophie hears a dragon “rattling through the cat flap, slinking to the living room, growing and growing in the dark.” No one believes her, but Sophie is sure. The story is about the various strategies she adopts to find the dragon and drive it away.

For the past couple of weeks Sam has been obsessed with this book and so we decided to reenact it.

First we had to make her a knight costume, because Sophie’s first tactic is to dress up as a knight to fight the dragon:

Thank goodness Amazon sends us a lot of cardboard boxes. Notice the fancy pink shield! The sword, however, is a bit floppy.

But when Sophie clatters down the stairs, the dragon runs away.

The next night she dresses as a fire fighter with a super soaker squirter. Sophie knows that dragons breathe fire. Sam and I agreed that “pretend” water would be okay for this activity, and we fashioned the super soaker out of a milk jug. Once again, note the fancy pink. The “helmet” is a bit unwieldy, though, since we taped a flash light to the top of it.

When Sophie splashes down the stairs, the dragon runs away.

On the third night she dresses up as a princess and plans to trick the dragon. Here Sam is sporting a crown and wand made by the mother of one of her friends. The costume jewelry she inherited from her great-grandmother, Ruth. I like how it makes her look like a flapper. And wands should definitely be held like baseball bats.

In the book, Sophie trips down the stairs and once again the dragon escapes.

The next night, she decides to creep up on it, as herself. She tiptoes downstairs and discovers that the dragon…

is her kitty cat!

Sorry there’s no picture of me curled up on the couch washing my tail. And I forgot to take one of Sam. You see, we reenacted this about 10 times, and every other time I was Sophie and Sam was the dragon/cat. When it was my turn to the play the beast, I made sure to tap the cat flap in our basement door. That was bittersweet, since I hadn’t heard that sound since before Camus died. And during our first few months in this house, the sound of the cat door flip flip flapping usually meant that baby Sammy was chasing Camus.

Camus would have made an excellent dragon in our play. So I like to think that I was channeling him a wee bit.