Castle stories and rainbow drawings

Here is a snippet from an otherwise trashed 2003 notebook. I wrote down a story as Moomin told it and acted it out with little animals and his toy wooden castle.

Once upon a time there was a beautiful castle with a flag waving in the air. The handsome prince talked and he said “Hello Princess” and she was trying to go to sleep and snore and snore. He waked her up with a gentle kiss. The sleeping beauty came back to her castle. “Hi Sleeping Beauty” said the princess. And she came into the castle. And the witch cast a spell. Let’s have a picnic, we can make this a picnic table. They can have some grapes. Stir, stir, stir, stirring the grapes. And (Moomin) hammered the castle roof tight. And the castle floor. And they have a picnic. That’s the end.

It’s very interesting to listen to kids’ narrative structures and the ways they put in snippets of genre! How can tiny humans be only 3 years old and yet know how to make up stories? It’s so amazing.

Here is a zebra drawing from that same notebook. Like the castle story has all the elements of fantasy, the drawing has all the elements of a zebra, put together in a somewhat nonlinear way.

My zebra drawing (which I am sure he asked for; I drew a lot of little cartoons on request.)

One more cute drawing, of a rainbow, by Moomin:

I’m tearing out those pages for Moomin’s scrapbook, and throwing rest of notebook away!