One way to expand our library has been little gosling reviewing the “look for more books in the series” on the back cover of a certain book, asking what the title of one or another book was, what it is about, pondering whether we have any of them in our book bin and singling out the one(s) he thinks he may enjoy.
It was one of those times that little gosling dwelled on a back cover. He pointed to James Mayhew’s “Katie and the dinosaurs”: “I want to read that one!” He received it, weeks later, with his shyly happy smile and placed it in my hands to read straight away. We read it again many consecutive nights after that :P.
A lovely introduction to dinosaurs. A story about friendship, kindness and loads and loads of imagination! The added plus: I love stories that teach kids about the value and pleasure of visiting cultural and science establishments. We have two other books from the Katie series, that little gosling devours equally avidly, focusing on Impressionist and post-Impressionist paintings.
This was our first dinosaur story and it took several readings to get the names right! On a trip to the Natural History Museum with her grandma, Katie immerses herself in a world of dinosaurs and erupting volcanoes. She befriends and helps a baby dinosaur find the way back to its parents, after being chased by a T-Rex. She meets all kinds of other dinosaurs on the way, has a picnic with them and, in the end, even manages to escape the hungry T-Rex, by throwing her meat pie at him.
We talk a lot on the margins of this story. Little gosling is usually impatiently waiting for the T-Rex: “when does the T-Rex appear?”, flipping through the pages to find it chasing Katie. He gets excited every time a new dinosaur comes into the picture: “What kind of animals are these?” Giggles when Katie and Hadrosaurus slide down the Apatosaurus’ long tail “wheeee!!!” and is so happy when baby Hadrosaurus hugs his parents again. “Which one is mummy and which one is daddy?” And whenever I expect it the least during the day, I can hear him go: “He was hungry! And he didn’t want cucumber sandwiches or chocolate biscuits, he wanted meat! He wanted Katie!” 🙂
