Sampson the Spaceman

My son has an imaginary friend that lives in a space rocket across the street from us. His name is Sampson and he’s very big. My son has just turned three - his imaginary friend has come along two years earlier than his sisters did (she got bored of her imaginary friend after about two months).

I couldn’t be prouder of the little geek. I love the fact that his imaginary friend lives in a spacerocket. I’m going to sit down with him and write a series of kid friendly sci-fi stories about ‘Sampson the Spaceman’.

I think there is a whole new market here. Sci-Fi for pre-school geeks. There are a couple of things on Cbeebies for this demographic - Lunar Jim and something in storymakers involving a spaceman and his dog but I think there is room for one more.

So lets see - thinking out loud here and remembering we’re talking about three year olds. Sampson is a big, brave astronaut living in the 21st Century just after the discovery of a technology that can find a planet on a sky map and take you straight there at the push of a button.

In each book we could start with Sampson entering his spacerocket and going to the map room. He finds the planet he wants to visit says some brilliant catch phrase I haven’t thought of yet, clicks the big red button, goes wooosh, wooo, and weeer a lot and then arrives just above the planet with some prominent feature visible from space.

Sampson could then go down to that prominent feature, meet a really interesting alien creature, get into a bit of trouble, solve a problem, make friends and then go back to his rocket, push the big red button to go home, land and then say something like ‘time for bed but there are plenty more planets and many more adventures for another day’.

What do you think?

Share/Save