A Redwall Halloween
We started listening to the first Redwall book on audio during our drive to the Smoky Mountains last year on November 1, 2020. M finished up reading the series about halfway through November 2021. So all dressing up as Redwall characters for Halloween this past year was the perfect culmination to a year of Redwall!
Of course M knew she wanted to be a Redwall character right away, but it took her more than a month to convince E and G. But finally she did convince them, I'm not sure how. But she was so effective at convincing E that now E has dived headfirst into the Redwall series and already has several books under her belt, although they're more above her level than they were for M when she started so she's not quite as lost in them.
M decided to be an otter, who are very pirate-like in the stories. She's from a lesser known book (Rakkety Tam) and her name is Brooky; she is the first female "skipper" (leader) of otters. E and G are both mice, G is the famous warrior mouse Matthias and E is the little mouse named Cornflower that he falls in love with. G really enjoyed his warrior identity. K didn't have a say in the matter, but we picked for him to be a mole baby whose name is Bungo. The moles in Redwall feel a little like hobbits in Lord of the Rings, and you can tell the similarities from his costume.
Of course the kids played Redwall for weeks and weeks ahead of time. That's one of the best things about Halloween, and it's the whole reason I do it. I would just never be able to convince myself to spend so much effort helping them indulge their imaginations if I didn't have this deadline every year. But since there's the excuse of Halloween, the kids basically get a "free" chance to let their imagination run wild! And seeing them run around with their costumes on, reliving their favorite stories and making up new and exciting ones of their own makes it really worth it for me!
Since it was also only a week after M's birthday and we had been out of town for her actual birthday, we took the chance to celebrate again with both sets of grandparents, and H's parents came down for it too. I made a Redwall cake (more like Pinkwall...) and it turned out to be really cool! You can see from M's face how much she's loving it! They won't always be willing to get this into their stories, and I just love being a part of it while it lasts.