Drawing with Elsa

Elsa and I did some drawing while David was napping the other day.  I posted her drawings...mine are, although technically better, much less interesting in my admittedly biased opinion. And I don't know how to get them the right way.  Sorry.   But perhaps I should have posted mine as well, since it bears thinking about.  We have been reading Swiss Family Robinson rather sporadically, because it is over David's head.  I have been shocked that it is not over Elsa's head, actually.  Anyway, I have been curious to see what she would draw from it, and we would talk about it occasionally, but it wasn't until I sat down and started drawing from it that she did as well.  This is what she came up with--and it is totally different from what I drew.   

Falconhurst--the treehouse they built.  The dad is carrying Franz up the rope ladder while the mother prepares something below.  The other boys are up there already.

This is Fritz, the oldest boy, with the monkey, Master Knips, that he adopted riding on the back of the dog, which is often (unrealistically, in my opinion) described in the book.

I was pretty impressed with her drawing, and it was so much fun to just sit and draw with her, even though, as usual, there was much housework to be done....I am trying to be better about being in the moment, which is not always my strong suit.  I had never read Swiss Family Robinson, and I never realized how long ago it was written and it turns out that the author, having never left Switzerland, was untroubled by accuracy or research.  The family is marooned on an island in the tropics of North America, and they are finding wild potatoes, penguins, kangaroos, salmon...and I think they may find elephants as well.  It is funny, and for a while I couldn't resist seriously explaining to Elsa that actually, kangaroos live only in Australia...but now I have chosen a new way.  We have talked about the fact that the author had never left Switzerland, and he wrote it when the Americas still seemed like a big, inknowable wilderness.  She is very interested in history, and does often ask, "So did the guy write it a really long time ago?"