Hello, my name is JiYoon and this is my winter story.

Once upon a time, there was a huge, snowy forest. The forest was filled with many magical creatures. Every wintry night, they walked quietly into the bedrooms of the youngest children to eat their dreams. They loved hopeful and bright dreams the most, but eating the good dreams turned the creatures into ugly nightmare monsters. Then every night, children would only dream nightmares. The people knew that the creatures were eating the hopeful dreams, but they were scared, too scared to fight. 

One night, the worst creature walked into the room of a small boy. But, on this night, the boy woke up. The boy screamed "AHhhhhhhh!" The creature was very surprised; it ran into the closet to hide. The boy stopped screaming and slowly stepped toward the closet. The creature had never felt scared before, it was a new feeling and he didn't like it. The boy slowly opened the closet door…

The creature looked like a zombie, his skin was falling off, his mouth was a wide and ugly grin, and his eyes were scary because they were huge and red.

But the boy was very brave, he just said "Who are you?"

The creature shivered and moved into the back of the closet. The boy walked toward the dream-eater and said "Hey, can we play now?" He smiled sweetly.

The dream-eater looked very confused; his face was very ugly, scary, and disgusting. "Why isn't the child afraid of me?" thought the monster. The monster didn't know that this was a uniquely brave child. The boy wasn’t afraid of the creature. The surprised monster ran through the bedroom and jumped out of the window. This happened every night for two months. Finally, their secret friendship began.

However, at the same time, a war was beginning between the humans and the nightmare creatures. The people thought it had become unbearable, because the creatures were eating more and more good dreams, they even began visiting the adults sometimes. So, the parents got ready to attack the creatures coming into their bedrooms by hiding in the closet with clubs. They put the creatures they caught in jail.

But then, the other creatures made more scary dreams and secretly spread nightmares. These were a different kind of nightmare—they made the dreamers go insane. The creatures became even more ugly and terrible!

The boy and the creature didn’t want the fighting to continue. They talked, asking each other “What should we do?” They thought about it for a long time and found an answer. The creatures could stop eating hopeful dreams, instead they would eat unimportant or boring dreams. When the creatures ate boring dreams they didn’t change into nightmare monsters. Also, the children didn’t dream scary dreams anymore. It was a win-win situation! In this way, one strange friendship saved the whole town!

The end.

Thank you for listening to my magical winter story. Goodbye.

Discussion Questions:

Talk about the details you remember from the story.

1. What is the problem in this town?

2. What happened with the small boy and the monster?

3. What kind of relationship do they develop?

4. Explain the war between humans and the creatures.

5. How did the war end?

6. Do you have nightmares? What dreams do you have? How do you keep from having bad dreams?