The Sleer

Back in August, when we decided to drive a thousand hours and camp our way through the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, we knew we would need a lot of audiobooks to keep the kids occupied in the car.

Chris always picks good ones.

We spent the entire week listening to Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book. I couldn't get enough. It was the perfect combination of creepy, odd, eccentric and fantastical, with a little gore mixed in.

Anyway, these few months later, the impression the novel left on little Mae smacked me right in the face.

Often, at school, they print the kids these take home books in black and white, minus illustrations. They bring them home several times to read to us, add some illustration, and then they disappear again.

This week's book was a Halloween treat, and today at school Mae got to illustrate it. She brought it home tonight to read to us (again) and I was impressed by her illustrations and wanted to record them here to share and to remember.

One of the creepier characters in the novel is the Sleer, the three headed snake-like monster who guards an ancient crypt for the "master"; who guards the master's three treasures: a bowl, a brooch, and a blade.

Mae's Halloween Book and her interpretation of The Sleer:

Page 1 - Her ghost in chains

Her Sleer! And the blade, the brooch, and the bowl (she mistakenly remembered the bowl to be coins)

I love these glimpses into her mental take-aways from the books we read and listen to.