When Children Still Believe in Dragons
A Journey Into Wonder: Where Imagination Awakens the Dream Keeper Within
There is a beautiful period in a child's life when the line between the possible and impossible has not yet been firmly drawn.
Dragons might live behind mountains. Fairies could have houses beneath the roots of trees. Clouds become ships. A stick becomes a wand. A cardboard box can take you to the moon. And a raindrop sliding down a window might contain an entire world.
Adults often call this imagination. Children simply call it possible.
I have spent much of my life thinking about children, education, trauma, creativity, and healing. And the older I become, the more I wonder whether one of the greatest gifts we can give a child isn't another lesson about how the world works.
Perhaps sometimes it is permission to imagine how the world could work.
That question eventually led me somewhere unexpected. It led me to dragons.
The Child Who Still Looks Out the Window
Children are naturally curious. They investigate. They invent. They pretend. They ask questions adults have stopped asking.
Why? What if? Could it? What lives over there?
Then, gradually, we teach them the boundaries of reality. That's important, of course. Children need knowledge. They need critical thinking. They need to understand the physical world they inhabit.
But I don't believe knowledge requires the death of wonder.
A child can learn how rain forms and still imagine Rain Dragons dancing between the drops. She can understand astronomy and still stare into the night sky, wondering what might be flying among the stars. She can understand botany and still suspect that an ancient tree knows more than it is telling her.
Science tells children something extraordinary: Look closely. There is more here than you first realized. Imagination asks almost the same thing.
Then Came Grandmother Dragon
When Dragon Dreams and Raindrops began forming in my imagination, I wasn't thinking about creating a product. I was following a story.
There was a little girl. There was rain tapping against her bedroom window. And somewhere beyond that window was a golden eye. Not frightening. Watching. Waiting.
Then came Grandmother Dragon. The world grew from there.
There were tiny Rain Dragons. Cloud Dragons drifting through the stars. A magical valley. A Heart Tree whose lights were beginning to fade. A golden leaf. And eventually, a little girl discovering that she might have a role in protecting something the world had begun to forget.
She becomes the Dream Keeper. And somewhere during the writing, I realized that perhaps this wasn't simply a children's fantasy after all.
What Happens When We Forget How to Listen?
At the center of the story stands the Heart Tree. Its lights are fading. There were once more. Why? Because people forgot how to listen.
That idea stayed with me. Because perhaps that is something adults really do forget.
We become busy. Productive. Responsible. Practical. We hurry children along because dinner needs cooking, emails need answering, laundry needs folding, and tomorrow morning is already approaching.
Meanwhile, the child beside us has discovered a ladybug. And she wants us to look. Really look. For thirty seconds, nothing else in the universe matters to her. There is only this tiny red creature crawling across her hand.
Perhaps we shouldn't be so quick to pull her away. There will be plenty of time for schedules. Let her marvel at the ladybug.
Imagination Is Not Frivolous
I am an educator as well as an artist and author, so creativity has never felt separate from learning to me.
Imagination allows children to experiment with possibility. Through stories and pretend play, they explore courage, fear, friendship, conflict, identity, loss, belonging, and hope.
A dragon can represent something enormous without requiring a child to have adult language for enormous things. A magical forest can become a place to explore uncertainty. A brave little girl can show another child that being small does not mean being powerless. And fantasy can sometimes create enough distance for difficult feelings to become approachable.
That doesn't mean every children's story needs to become a therapeutic lesson. In fact, I think we sometimes work too hard to make children's experiences useful.
Sometimes magic should simply be magic. Sometimes dragons should simply make children laugh. Especially when they sneeze raindrops.
Children Need Beauty Too
When we talk about children's needs, we understandably begin with the essentials.
- Safety.
- Food.
- Shelter.
- Education.
- Healthcare.
- Love.
But I would add something else. Beauty.
Children deserve beautiful experiences.
- Music.
- Color.
- Gardens.
- Stories.
- Animals.
- Paint.
- Mud between their toes.
- Stars.
- Birthday candles.
- Puddles.
- Books held in someone's lap.
- A grown-up willing to make ridiculous dragon noises.
Beauty doesn't require wealth. Some of the most magical childhood experiences cost absolutely nothing.
- Lie underneath a tree and watch the branches move.
- Catch snowflakes.
- Build a blanket fort.
- Plant a seed.
- Dance in the kitchen.
- Look for shapes in clouds.
- Listen to rain.
- Tell a story.
- Make something.
- Pretend.
Wonder is remarkably inexpensive.
Perhaps Adults Need This Book Too
Something unexpected happened while I was creating Dragon Dreams and Raindrops. The child in the story wasn't the only one entering the magical world. I was too.
I found myself thinking about the child within us who once believed almost anything was possible. Before disappointment taught us caution. Before responsibility consumed our time. Before survival demanded our attention. Before someone told us to grow up.
Perhaps growing older doesn't require abandoning that child. Maybe maturity isn't the absence of wonder. Maybe maturity is knowing exactly how difficult life can be and choosing to protect wonder anyway. That is a very different thing.
The Dream Keeper Awakens
There is a moment in the story when a golden leaf falls from the Heart Tree. It carries warmth. A symbol begins to form. And Grandmother Dragon realizes what has happened. The Dream Keeper has awakened.
I love that moment because the little girl doesn't become powerful by becoming someone else. She doesn't need to become bigger. Harder. Older. She doesn't defeat anyone. Her gift comes from something she already possesses: the ability to listen.
Perhaps there is something there for the rest of us. We spend so much of life searching for power through accomplishment, authority, money, influence, and recognition. Children remind us about another kind of power.
- Attention.
- Curiosity.
- Connection.
- Imagination.
- Wonder.
And Now the Dragons Are Ready to Fly
After countless hours of writing, illustrating, editing, rearranging pages, changing details, adding coloring pages, laughing at dragons, and occasionally arguing with book formatting, Dragon Dreams and Raindrops is ready to leave my hands and enter other people's homes.
That is a strange feeling for an author. For so long, these characters belonged to the private world of my imagination.
Now children I may never meet will know Grandmother Dragon. They will meet the Rain Dragons. They will discover the Heart Tree. Some little girl may wonder whether she could be a Dream Keeper, too.
And perhaps somewhere a parent, grandparent, teacher, aunt, uncle, or caregiver will sit beside a child and read the story aloud. Maybe they'll make voices. I hope they make voices. Maybe the child will ask questions. Maybe they'll talk about dreams. Maybe they'll go outside afterward and look at the clouds.
And maybe-just maybe-they'll both look a little more carefully the next time rain begins tapping against the window.
Leave the Window Open
I wrote Dragon Dreams and Raindrops for children. But I also wrote it for every adult who remembers what it felt like to believe the woods might contain secrets. For every educator who understands that curiosity deserves protecting. For every parent or grandparent who has watched a child's face transform when a story captures their imagination. And perhaps for the wounded child inside some of us who didn't get enough time to simply be little.
We cannot protect children from every difficult thing they will encounter. But we can give them places where imagination remains safe.
- We can give them stories.
- We can give them beauty.
- We can give them creativity.
- We can listen when they tell us something impossible.
And instead of immediately explaining why it cannot be true, occasionally we can smile and ask:
"And then what happened?"
Because childhood is brief. Wonder is precious. And the world will have plenty of opportunities to teach children what isn't possible.
Maybe our job is to make sure they also spend some time imagining what is.
So tonight, if you hear rain against the window, look twice. You never know. There might be a dragon looking back.
Welcome to Dragon Dreams and Raindrops**.**
The Dream Keeper is waiting.
