Oli is the cutest worm, with those big, red glasses and contagious smile, who unknowingly  lands in the Magical Garden, falling from an unfriendly beak. He makes friends with a Witty Apple who takes him to Madam Onion, the knowledgeable garden healer, master of the vitamins’ secrets and slayer of germs and viruses, to have his broken tail mended. Accidentally, he knocks down the jar where Mucus is locked away from the world. A fierce battle ensues between the inhabitants of the Magical Garden on one side and Mucus on the other.

Great opportunity to learn how useful and beneficial earthworms are to our gardens, true super-heroes, much like the broccoli, onion and garlic that put their strengths together to annihilate Mucus. Even more so as little gosling is not a fan of tomatoes, onions or garlic. Tomatoes, it beats me why, because he loves tomato sauce and ketchup. The other two he finds too spicy (“maybe I’ll like them when I grow up”), although he does occasionally taste some onion heart, but only because he can dip it in the salt and he loves that ;).

It’s an amazingly fun and playfully informative read. The scattered little poems and witty names are charming. The characters each have their own distinct personalities and add flavour to the story. The panicky Lisp Tomato and Madam Onion’s Whisk are my favourites. The illustrations marry well with the text, perfectly depicting the conviviality of the garden community. 

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It is a rhymed chronicle of a first day at the bug school, equipped with dedicated classes for different insects: spiders, crickets, ladybirds, fleas…, complete with a vibrant dining room, a playground, busy toilets, an assembly first thing in the morning and storytime in the afternoon. I only remember one story from my time in nursery, with all of us gathered round on small chairs, hands behind our backs. A bit less relaxed than little gosling, who seats with his colleagues in a circle, on cushions brought from home.  

There’s something to learn about bugs and about school time, different school subjects or behaviour in a school setting. And it all transpires naturally, funnily and gently from both rhymes and illustrations. We spend a lot of time chatting about the lovely, playfully detailed illustrations. Little gosling is fascinated by the abacus in the ladybird math class; makes me vocalise repeatedly the song that Chloe is learning in cricket class ; has us identify the individual bugs by name in the group pages; we talk about the emotions reflected on the tiny bugs faces and we discuss about which bugs we want to be/which class we want to be in. Best of all, when the story ends with the tiny, happy bugs shouting “can we come again tomorrow?”, he responds deliciously squealing “yeeeees, you can”!

Needless to say, this is one of the books that I take on the go that little gosling is sure to delight in whenever, wherever.

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This book always makes little gosling retell what he most enjoyed of our hikes. We had the book with us on his first hike in the Ardennes, some weeks ago. Coincidentally, we did some serious bug watching:) so it was a perfect fit. We saw ladybirds (with different numbers of black spots on their backs), (many, many, many) black beetles, butterflies of different sizes and colours and bees. I am in awe of his amazement (and patience!!!) in observing the mini beasts for tens of minutes at once. He just crouched down and stayed there, following with his gaze the beetle pushing pebbles and getting in and out from between lumps of dirt or the ladybird going up and down grass stalks. 

More recently, during our hikes in the Black Forest in Germany, we did some more bug watching. I admit I had never seen slugs before… they came out in such big numbers after rain, they were all around, big and brown. Here and there we found a slithering snail and we stopped and crouched to watch him move slooooowly slowly, singing “Melc, melc, codobelc”.. There were so many wasps flying over and assaulting our food plates and drinks, that little gosling got afraid of them and kept swinging his arm shouting “go away, wasps!”. He also got on more friendly terms with bees. Our guesthouse had a beautiful garden full of blooming flowers; at moments, he asked them to go away, but they never did and he came to me all anxious pointing to the bees and afraid to continue his exploration around the garden. I held him close and then took his hand and went together to watch the bees buzzing around the flowers, saying “hello, bees! You do such amazing work, carrying pollen from place to place. Thank you!”. After that, he would keep a safe distance from the bees, but felt more reassured and comfortable around them and would say hello to them, too. We watched grasshoppers jump in the grass and heard their loud chirrup in the meadows. 

Little gosling likes the spiderwebs on the end pages (which he ignores with many other books).  We usually play search and find the bugs on the first and last pages, which contain introductory and closing rhymes. He likes to identify in the illustrations the actions mentioned in the rhymes and he often associates the poems with nursery rhymes we’ve learned, asking me to sing them as we turn the page to different bugs (“Incy Wincy Spider”; “Ladybird, ladybird”; “Micul greieras”; “Albinuța mea”). Oh, and the ladybirds… he looks for them on every page in the book :). 

He first saw a fly in this book. We were sitting at the table at a farmhouse in the Ardennes, reading whilst awaiting dinner when a fly happened to fly buzzing around us and he kept following it around, noticing its every move and stop. He laughingly finished the rhyme “being very buzzy” :)). He does like the spider web covered in morning dew, loves to go “snip, snip” when we read about the earwig’s pincers and gets so excited about the beehive (“bebe wants to see a bee hive”). He takes the shortcut to the caterpillar becoming a “beautiful butterfly” (just like in Eric Carle’s “The very hungry caterpillar”). He curiously observes the ants carrying the leaves on their backs. Every time we finish the book, we each name our favourite minibeast. Little gosling starts off with the beetle, because he remembers the giant beetles made of sticks and logs he saw in the forest and the black beetles he observed through the magnifying glass. I always say it’s the grasshopper, because it makes music – and he changes his mind and says he likes it too.

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