This is one of the first classical stories we’ve read together and woww, what a huge crush it is!! 

“The wonderful wizard of Oz” was one of my favourite stories growing up. I still carry with me bits and pieces of its dramatised version for radio/vinyl in Romanian and have been singing its song about the yellow brick road to little gosling to sleep. I’ve long wanted to share the story with him and I finally decided to do it when he showed a strong and persistent interest in tornadoes 😛

It’s retold in a simple fashion, a bit abruptly, but totally easy to follow for my 3 years and a half old, without it being too poor in language. Little gosling has been totally fascinated by the words “cellar”, “twister”, “booming” and “scrub”:)); he keeps asking me every time about their meaning and then runs to ask his daddy “daddy, did you know that….?” 

The whole page spread out illustrations help a lot with the understanding of the text and have captivated his attention. The tornado, the witches and the wizard, the flying monkeys (“we all know monkeys can’t fly, but these ones do”), Oz’s giant head screen and megaphone (“to make the booming voice”) are elements on which we dwell quite a lot each time we read it.. Which is pretty much every night for more than a week, already.

I get lots of “why” questions: why do they have to go in a cellar? Why does Dorothy live with her uncle and aunt? Where is her granny? Why is her uncle called Henry? And so on…We talk about emotions and what each of the characters experiences in different situations, particularly who gets scared of what. Dorothy and Toto look quite fearless. He also has me singing “We’re off to see the wizard, the wonderful wizard of Oz” from the movie several times :))).

Can’t wait to read the original story and watch the move with him when he grows a bit older!