Bethany:  Mom, do you know what my favorite part of the Dawn Treader is?

Me:  No, what?                       

Bethany:  The part where Useless turns into a dragon.

Me: (Laughing) Eustace not Useless. But, he was pretty useless wasn’t he?

Bethany: Yes…

“But just as he reached the edge of the pool two things happened.  First of all, it came over him like a thunder-clap that he had been running on all fours—and why on earth had he been doing that?  And secondly, as he bent toward the water, he thought for a second that yet another dragon was staring up at him out of the pool.  But in an instant he realized the truth.  The dragon face in the pool was his own reflection.  There was no doubt of it.  It moved as he moved:  it opened and shut its mouth as he opened and shut his. 

He had turned into a dragon while he was asleep.  Sleeping on a dragon’s hoard with greedy, dragonish thoughts in his heart, he had become a dragon himself.”

                                   -The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

Looking back at this conversation with Bethany I can see what a teachable moment this was. I wish I’d stopped and probed a little deeper and talked a little more about Eustace and his transformation to and from a dragon, but the truth is that I missed it.  Bethany was in the middle of watching the BBC video of The Dawn Treader (for the millionth time) and I was busy doing something else. So I missed it.

Be careful not to miss those teachable moments…they are precious and irretrievable.

Btw, in case you haven’t heard…Disney is releasing Price Caspian in May.