Royal Oak Third Grader Presents Dogman with a Key to the City
(Terry Lakins, April 19, 2024)
Royal Oak—A young elementary school student in Michigan has proudly represented her city. Dogman is the mascot, and main character of the Dogman book series by author Dav Pilkey. The Scholastic property is so popular the mascot Dogman is known to travel and meet kids throughout the country. Recently Dogman has broken new ground by receiving his first key to a city and it happened here in Royal Oak.
The city of Royal Oak held a city-wide essay contest for third graders, and the winner would get the honor of meeting Dogman and presenting him with his first city key.
Eleanor Smylie, an elementary student at Royal Oak public schools, was just one of many third graders who decided to give the essay contest a try. Smylie, 8, is an avid reader and she said gets so sunk into her books that sometimes she gets in trouble for reading too much. Among her favorite books are Dogman, Captain Underpants (another Pilkey book series), Harry Potter and Humphrey the Hamster books.
The only thing she loves more than her books is the city of Royal Oak. When news got out about the essay contest, Smylie was eager to try it out. The contest itself is a short form essay: In two to three sentences the student was to describe what Dogman the mascot would love about the city of Royal Oak.
Smylie said she loves the Detroit Zoo, especially the Penguin House, and the Wild Lights during the Christmas season. She also really likes the Winter Blast, which is a festival with winterized activities (sledding, ice skating, zip lining), and Art Beats and Eats, an annual Labor Day weekend event with food, attractions, and live music. She mainly highlighted the Detroit Zoo and Winter Blast in her essay, hoping to share her love of the city.
The contest, while simple to execute, had quite a vast competition. This is a city-wide contest after all, not just one school. Even limited to just the third-grade student class this includes a total of six elementary schools in Royal Oak (Addams, Upton, Northwood, Oakland, Oak Ridge and Keller). That is a lot of possible students competing, and victory is never guaranteed for a contest this big.
Yet by chance Smylie managed to be the winner. The day she found out she won the contest she had been sent home early from school for an unrelated reason. Smylie had accidentally injured her thumb earlier on a door handle, and the pain wasn’t fun to deal with. Though she wasn’t expecting to get hurt that day she didn’t expect what her father had to say to her when she got home.
“I was just sitting there, and my thumb was hurt.” Smylie said. “Then my dad came up and said guess what and I heard the news. I almost did a backflip.”
Matthew Smylie, Eleanor’s father, had this to add: “I was pretty excited. I obviously didn’t expect it because such a large amount of people entered the contest.”
The pain mattered a whole lot less that day.
The event itself was quite large. A slew of local businesses got in on Dogman’s visit, setting up different stops and events so the mascot was able to go around in style. This included a couple of meets and greets at Sidetrack bookstore, who largely facilitated the Dogman’s visit.
The big stop was the Royal Oak police station, where the big ceremony was held. It was filled with many kids, parents, police officers, and Romi the city mascot – also a dog. Smylie said it was a bit stressful because so many people showed up to witness it, a lot on a third graders shoulders. However, she was so happy she won, as well as being grateful for the honor she was receiving. So, when the big moment came Smylie was all smiles as she presented the key to the city to Dogman, alongside City Commissioner Brandon Kolo. Even with the city watching her she managed to conquer her nerves and made the important moment happen. Smylie was the kid of the hour and did Royal Oak proud.
On the ceremony Kolo also had this to add: “It was a special moment and I’m so happy for Eleanor. She represented all the kids that were there that day. She did a phenomenal job of being there for the city.”
Smylie also received a $20 gift card for her local bookstore, which she subsequently used on the 12th Dogman book in the series.
Dogman has more places to see, more children to visit, and may just receive another key to a city from another kid someday. But Eleanor Smylie will always the be first kid to do so.