One of our very favourites, “The secret sky garden”, with text by Linda Sarah and wonderful illustrations by Fiona Lumbers, combines some of the things little gosling enjoys more: flowers, music, fairy lights, planes, water cans, kids playing… This is one of the books I tend to take with me for those moments when he suddenly stops, irrespective of where we are, sits down and asks mommy to read a book. We both can’t seem to get tired of it.
Funni is a lonely girl who spends a lot of her spare time in an abandoned rooftop car park next to the airport. Feeling something is missing, she works hard to clean the place, plant and care for a garden, transforming the place into a beautiful and cozy playground for herself. The rooftop garden finds her the perfect friend. Zoo notices the garden from a plane and has to go there. He is also lonely and shares Funni’s passion for music and kite flying. A heartwarming story about friendship, with a lovely message about kids’ autonomy, creativity and enormous work capacity and a touching environmental note.
I fell in love with the illustrations and the explosion of colours! They’re so stunningly uplifting and cheerful! There’s so much contrast! I badly want a Peruvian hat just like Funni’s, the same dark blue :P. And those old abandoned rusty cars in the car park have such amazing colours; wouldn’t mind having a car like that :))). And the flowers… wooow! I’m a definite Fiona Lumbers’ fan.
Little gosling liked watching the planes taking off and touching down, so intrigued by the control tower. He loved experimenting with the different sounds transcending the story: the noise from the planes, the recorder and harmonica the two kids play and the church bells chiming. We listened to some nice recorder renditions of “My heart will go on” and Buddy Greene on the harmonica. Ohh and those church bells! :))) He’s going diing-dooong on me when I least expect it. He’s declared his wish to see church bells. So, that’s one more thing on our long to do list together.
He was excited recognising Funni’s little radio which looks a lot like our kitchen radio and the fairy lights in the garden, looking so much like the ones hanging around his bed frame. And he was so very happy when Zoo finally joined Funni in the secret sky garden. He did not like seeing Funni sad. He repeats “I must be dreaming” after Zoo with his little sweet face all lit up :).
He likes to repeat “something was missing” and “definitely”, in some form; it’s a pretty long statement and he’s saying it very sweetly. The most surprising thing to me is little gosling now recognising letter “S” as “secret sky garden”. I can definitely see the link there :).
