Author's Note

For a long time, I drew Nobita as the hero of every adventure.

This made sense, because Doraemon is his cat. The gadgets come out of Doraemon's pocket, and Doraemon's pocket is in Nobita's bedroom, and Nobita's bedroom is where everything begins. But I always felt a little guilty about the others.

Giant has been following Nobita into trouble since Chapter One. Shizuka has been the most sensible person in every room she has ever entered, and nobody gives her credit for it. Suneo has been scheming so hard for so long that you almost forget he is scheming because he is frightened. And Sensei — well. Sensei is the only adult who ever actually shows up when something goes wrong. He deserves one good day.

So this book began as a question I asked myself: what would happen if Nobita stayed home?

The answer turned out to be five stories.

Each one gave me a different kind of trouble. Nobita's story was hard to write because Nobita is afraid of everything, and I needed him to face something very old and very powerful, alone in the Cretaceous period, sixty-five million years ago. He did not become brave in the way that storybook heroes become brave. He became brave in the way that ordinary people become brave, which is by being so frightened for so long that being frightened stops working.

Giant's story surprised me. I always thought I knew Giant. He is loud. He is large. He hits people. But when I put him in front of Darkseid — a villain whose power makes Giant's fists completely useless — I discovered something. Giant knows exactly what his fists are for. They are for standing between his friends and the thing that wants to hurt them. That is not a small thing.

Shizuka already knew she was capable. Her story was about convincing everyone else.

Suneo's story made me laugh the most. A trickster against a trickster, across six planets, and the treasure at the end turns out to be a mirror. Of course it does. Suneo looked at it for a very long time.

And then there is Sensei. I will not tell you how he saves ancient Egypt, because it would spoil the ending, and also because I am still a little amazed that it worked. But a good lesson plan is more dangerous than you might think.

Doraemon is in all five stories, in small ways. He cannot resist. Neither can I.

I have spent fifty years writing about this boy, this cat, and this classroom. I have given them gadgets for every problem. But the more stories I write, the more I believe the gadgets are the least important part.

What matters is this: Nobita was afraid, and he went anyway. Giant was strong in the only way that matters. Shizuka listened when nobody else did. Suneo, for once, told the truth. And Sensei wrote a lesson plan that changed history.

None of them are the kind of hero you read about in other books.

That is why they are heroes.

Every child is a hero. They just haven't found their story yet.

— Fujiko F. Fujio