I acquired the book as part of an introduction to the spring package. Contrary to what I had expected, it’s more a book about winter, but that’s ok. Little gosling liked it so much that we’ll just get the other seasons as well. Once he gets his hands on this book, no way we can put it down after one lecture; he browses through it again and again and again, until I ask to move on to a different book.
A child and his beautiful blue-eyed white husky take a walk around their house and take in the winter night, which gradually leaves room to morning and the bustling of spring. The kid observes the nature around him and the different elements engage in a lyrical conversation: the snow, the footprints in the snow, the pond, the trees, the flowers,etc. Beautiful metaphor and a novel, subtle way to show different seasonal changes. Lots of hellos, also :P. I found the illustrations too abstract in the beginning, but little gosling was captivated from the get go and anyway, I find it important to expose him to all kinds of storytelling and illustrating, to encourage his imagination and creativity.
Little gosling calls it the “baby ouf book” and looks for the kid and the dog on every page. For quite some time he was fascinated by the winter pages; now he’s paying more attention to the spring ones, curious about all that green. He must have found it familiar. When we landed in Brussels and he first started going to the nursery, we started our own ritual: we said hello to things that we saw on our way there: hello car, hello bus, hello park, hello fountain, hello pigeons, etc. We still do it when we go outside, it’s how he learnt to say “hello” and “goodbye”. The best part is that in the book they answer back. He squeals joyfully at the sticks frozen in the brook and remembers he saw sticks in the park, fallen from “poms” (the Romanian word for “tree”, but with an English-like plural :)))). He likes the details, like the treetop house in which a squirrel is sleeping or the empty nest and points at them every time. And he likes the glasshouse, keeps repeating the word.
