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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Oliver only eats chips, to his mom’s desperation. When he spends an entire week at his grandparents’, who grow their own vegetables, his grandpa comes up with a simple, yet genius way to have him discover veggies. Oliver can have chips if he can find the potatoes in the garden; otherwise, he must eat whatever he finds. It worked! And he loved all the veggies he found!  

I like the story on several levels. It features time spent with the grandparents, around a garden, learning first hand about how our food is produced. There’s a strong parallel there with both little gosling’s pairs of grandparents. It is also a good reminder that knowing one’s way around a vegetables garden is probably a good idea and it can go very far in waking up a child’s curiosity and interest in food. Furthermore, the book generally fosters a healthy and positive relationship with food. Oliver is portrayed gradually getting to enjoy the foods he’s discovering. It has been an effective tool to learn about the featured veggies (carrots, spinach, peas, beetroot, potatoes, rhubarb, cabbage), how they grow, how they look like, what part of the plants we eat. We’re meant to try a beetroot salad, like the one Oliver eats on Friday. That’s what little gosling has been more excited about. It is a also a good introduction to the days of the week, since Oliver discovers a new veggie each day. 

The illustrations do the trick in terms of identification of veggies. This is one of few books little gosling likes to listen to read aloud and only peeks at the illustration when he knows the name of the next veggie comes up, kind of like to get reassurance that it corresponds to what he’s thinking of. And he is now fixated on discovering what the family dog is up to.

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These two pizza books have had the greatest success so far. Both describe the steps of pizza-making and are great for vocabulary development.Must have something to do with little gosling loving pizza. I don’t think it would matter much what we put on it, he would probably eat it anyway. He doesn’t mind onions on pizza, but he can’t be bothered otherwise with it, for example :))). But his favourite, by far, is ham on the pizza :))). 

Yesterday was pizza day @home. We’ve had this every week since lockdown started, with daddy eager to experiment and improve his home-made pizza. Daddy has been a bit weary of letting little gosling partake in the action, but we found him something to do: he gets to break the stems off the mushrooms with his thumb :P, before mommy trims and slices them. Yesterday, I lingered around too long, whilst daddy prepared the crust for two pizzas and little gosling was napping, so when little gosling woke up, I still had to run to the supermarket to buy some…. mushrooms, precisely. Little gosling insisted (loudly) to go to the supermarket buy the mushrooms himself, so we went together. We bought readily sliced mushrooms, as we were in a hurry, and some ham :P… In the process, we also rehearsed some fruits and veggies, working on the difference between tomatoes and potatoes. Back home, we indulged in reading at the kitchen table, whilst daddy’s pizzas were in the oven.

These two books made pizza day a much more exciting time! We ask in the morning: “What day is today?” and he enthusiastically replies: “Pizza Day!”

“The Little Red Hen (makes a pizza)” by Philemon Sturges, illustrated by Amy Walrod follows a quirky, busy and somewhat silly hen who decides to make a pizza when she spots a can of tomato sauce in her cupboard; she’s got nothing else she needs for the pizza and tries without luck to enlist the help of the duck, the dog and the cat. She goes (with her purple bag and high heel shoes) to different shops to get all she needs and cooks a big pizza with lots of toppings that she shares with the three friends, who readily offer to do the dishes. A fun story about hard work and generosity, ending with four friends enjoying a huge pizza together. There is enough repetition and humour in the text and so much quirkiness in the characters to easily appeal to young readers, despite what might look like quite a long text.. 

After the first reading, little gosling was already giggling and repeating the negative answers of the three friends who preferred to go on having fun (“Not I, said the Duck; Not I, said the Dog; Not I, said the Cat”) and daddy could already imagine him serving us this reply soon enough. He was intrigued at the little details about the hen: the bunny shaped slippers; her drinking tea or reading about holidays while waiting for the pizza to be done. Aaaand, he curiously observed the saxophone the cat is carrying around throughout. Another music related word learnt and a good hook to explore some sax music. 

“Pizza Day” by Melissa Iwai strikes a bit closer to home. It depicts a young kid preparing a pizza together with his father, from gathering the vegetables they need for the tomato sauce from their own garden to enjoying the pizza together at the family table and lots of time spent outdoors, in the garden or playing with the family dog. The father-kid time together probably resonated with little gosling, as well as some of the close-ups of the process and kitchen, which he excitedly identifies (“like this…”). We had a good time together counting (five to one) and talking about the different vegetables and herbs they gathered from the garden. 

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