Illustrated in warm tones of pink and yellow and orange, it introduces one by one ten instruments – brass, reeds and strings included, as well as the vocabulary for the musical groups, culminating with a chamber group of ten that gives a concert in a fancy concert hall, closing with a bow and an “encore”. It’s a pretty accurate image and sequence of how a classical concert unfolds. Written in rhyme, the verses describe the physical appearance of instruments as much as the tones and feelings they convey to the audience. The portrayal of the members of the orchestra reflects the instrument they’re playing. And they all seem to be swaying and moving to the rhythm of the music. The pages are full of musical scores and musical notes flying around. Illustrations are so very fluid, flowing and, ultimately, musical. 

I feared the vocabulary may be too complicated for a two years old, but little gosling enjoys the sound of the words and musicality of the rhyme. Take, for example, “With mournful moan and silken tone, itself alone comes one trombone”. We play at guessing the instruments and the order in which they appear. He gets particularly excited at the flute and the French horn, as well as at the conductor. He is also smitten with the two cats, mouse and dog playing on each page, until eventually falling asleep at the end of the concert, after dancing together to the music of the orchestra. He likes to repeat mommy’s commentary to the illustrations: “when the concert is finished and the orchestra has gone home, the concert hall is cleaned and the dog, the cats and the mouse go to sleep” :). 

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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 :).

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Dilly is a “little and wonky” donkey that loves carting children to school until, one day, her owner benches her, replacing her with a “wonderful, winsome, young” horse. Dilly proves she can still be useful by hindering the robbery of the horse entirely on its own and starts a new career as a police helper. Who knew a donkey’s bray could sound like a frightening “nee naw, nee naw”?!

The rhyming text is fun to read. So many words (particularly verbs) to learn and so much to explore and discover in the illustrations! They are beautiful and rich. One can easily feel transported to a faraway exotic island. There’s a myriad of characters and they’re all very expressive. Dilly is lovable, with her flower decorated straw hat and cute short, chubby legs. Her friends, three crabs and a parrot (that reads!) follow her everywhere. There are so many details to catch a young child’s attention. Little gosling spends a lot of time observing the kids carted to school: facial expressions, clothes, attitudes. He is curious about the one baby who is not wearing shoes and follows him throughout the book (“baby is barefoot”). He has even taken to leave his sandals at home these past few days and if I were to trace it back somewhere, this would be it :))). He loves Dilly’s shed, adorned with colourful fairy lights, just like his house-framed bed. He is also curious about the lemur stealing fruits out of a woman’s basket that Dilly chases whilst working with the police. However, the best moment of all is hearing little gosling going “nee naw, nee naw” around the house :))).

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There’s so much to learn for a young child from such a simple story. A caterpillar comes out of the egg, eats everything that it finds (and that is lots!); then it wraps itself into a cocoon and it reemerges as a beautiful caterpillar. It makes for a good practice for counting from one to five, for learning the days of the week, for exploring fruits and food and expanding the little ones’ vocabulary. Not to mention, understanding where butterflies come from. I find it fascinating how Eric Carle manages to expose tiny details of the natural world in a wider educational context. Not too many, not too few words, just the right amount. Perfect! I would definitely choose this over many other picture books. It’s a wonderful library starter! 

Little gosling has learned it by heart by now and is reciting it alongside me reading it. He likes to practice counting the fruits, reminding me on the way that he loves strawberries and oranges and “bebe not like plums”. He has started to recite the names of the weekdays: Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, Sixthday :)))). He simply skips Wednesday. He manages to say all the foods the caterpillar eats on the Saturday, even though he’s never eaten any of them :P. His favourite is “lollipop”, the sound of which he finds amusing and bursts into laughter. My favourite one is the salami, which he reads as “samali” :))). He’s empathetic with the caterpillar afterwards, “oooh, his tummy hurts”. He also likes the sound of “cocoon” and his excitement builds up through “pushing his way out” and coming out as a “faaaa” (aka butterfly)!!!! We have so much fun reading it!

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I got the book to foster little gosling’s curiosity about Africa and keep it as a constant reminder of the continent he was born on. The endearing image on the cover of the baby and mommy looking at each other, playfully and so lovingly also helped :). I love it and I am so glad little gosling is enjoying it as much as I do.

A mama carrying her baby wrapped on her back goes to the market. The baby attracts attention and gets offered various treats (bananas, oranges, roasted sweetcorn, biscuits, coconuts), without mom noticing anything. A “good” baby that he is, he eats one piece of each and puts the rest into the basket on mama’s head. The simple phrasing follows a repetitive and predictable pattern and is very catchy. The story explores fruits and vegetables (baby’s treats and things that mama buys in the meantime), face expressions and reactions (surprised, naughty, curious, clapping, grinning…). It offers a good opportunity to practice numbers and counting backwards from six to one. I find the illustrations gorgeous and uplifting; there is so much colour and so intense, very African.

I like pointing out to little gosling mama carrying the baby on her back. His Zimbabwean and Mozambican nannies used to put him on their backs for his naps when he was a baby. It took him thirty seconds on average to melt down into blissful sleep. I liked it so much and found it so practical, that I  also wore him on my back for a while. I was never able to carry him in a towel or one of the beautifully colored textile shawls I was offered in South Africa, but I admired their dexterity in placing the baby on their backs. I needed my husband’s help and used my baby carrier. Still, when we were out and about, travelling or shopping, moving, it was such a comfortable way of being close, whilst going about my day. 

Little gosling likes observing and exploring the details on each page. He claps with the baby when he gets the chin-chin biscuits, giggling at the sound of “chin-chin” :))). He particularly likes it when the baby is being “naughty” and the sound of “flip-flops” (still struggling to say that one right :P). He shows me the cover picture inside the book and he squeals with excitement when mama realises it was baby who put all the goodies in the basket and squeals with endearment and caresses the page at the image of baby and mama looking at each other, mama gently touching baby’s hand.

Such a lovely, cheerful and effortlessly educational book centred on a mom and baby going about their daily life together. 

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Jack loves egg sandwiches. One day, for lunch, he receives the unexpected visit of a …. hungry bear. He candidly (or not?!) keeps offering the bear from his huge pile of egg sandwiches, despite the bear grumpily announcing “bears don’t eat egg sandwiches”. Whilst getting more and more annoyed with Jack’s offering, the bear leisurely has him set himself up to be eaten. Jack gets out of being eaten at the very last moment by sheer wit. His attempts to dissuade the bear by enumerating what he finds disgusting tastes culminate in the dreaded “I’ll taste of egg sandwiches”. Interestingly enough, Jack behaves as nothing had happened and offers the bear a different kind of sandwich. 

I first heard it on Julie’s Library podcast. I liked it so much, that I immediately bought it for little gosling. I enjoy the podcast better, but he enjoys it best read by mommy. He loves imitating the bear’s knock on the door. He quickly stands up and finds the closest thing in which he can knock with his small hands, whilst looking at mommy with a big smile. He gets more excited as the bear’s irritation grows and yells the different verbs used in the book. By now, he knows it by heart. The climax of excitement comes when Jack tries to dissuade the bear from swallowing him; he particularly loves it when Jack mentions the smell of dirty socks :))). He has so much fun with this story and it’s a true joy to read it together. 

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This was part of a batch of books I had bought to introduce little gosling to the world of (classical) music, to familiarise him with musical instruments. The piano seemed like a great start. He loves bears and, since he was a few months old, we have listened to relaxing piano music at sleep time. After reading the book, he was curious to listen to some piano pieces, when I made the suggestion. He now asks for the piano music himself sometimes. 

A bear cub comes across a piano in the forest and grows up learning to play it beautifully. Heard by humans, he becomes a great star in the big bright city. Nostalgic, he returns to the forest to find that his friends have cherished his piano and have proudly followed his career, collecting newspaper clips of his achievements. 

A good introduction to the notions of success, life-changing decisions and homesickness. I like the disinterested way in which it depicts friendship and the way in which it underlines the importance of the inextricable bonds with our roots and home. It shows the tough choices one may face to follow one’s dreams, but also that success can,  but does not need to be lonely. All quite complex concepts for the youngest ones, but on a much deeper level than what they perceive at first sight. I love the forest illustrations, so warm and bright, as well as the melancholic bear. Very endearing! It features a beautiful double-page illustration of a full concert hall, all eyes on the big piano and the fancily dressed up bear, which serves as a good introduction to kids, together with the associated vocabulary. 

Little gosling gets excited with the “pianooo!” and very curious about the bear’s friendship with the little girl who takes him to the city; he looks to identify her in all images. He’s living all the emotions together with the bear, most strongly the homesickness; the only lines in the book he recites are “He missed his forest. He missed his old friends. He missed home”. And we spent some time observing the bear sitting up on the rooftops and looking over the river to his forest. He shares the bear’s surprise (coupled with disappointment on little gosling’s side) at finding the clearing empty and the sheer joy at seeing the piano kept safe and all his bear friends happy to see him again.

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