Spinderella is a small, intrepid spider who wants nothing more than to learn about numbers. She finds her family’s absolute disinterest and even disdain on the matter frustrating. Luckily, she lives in a school. With the help of her “hairy godmother”, she learns to count up to twenty, divide up the teams and keep the score at football by paying close attention to the kids at school. She then uses all her newly acquired knowledge to organise her big family into peaceful and fair football playing. 

This is the first Julia Donaldson’s non-rhymed story and one of only two collaborations with other illustrators that we read. But such a big LIKE! The first “fairy godmother” encountered – and oh! Such an original one it is :))). A story about the importance of numbers and basic mathematics. How else would one know how many boots are needed to protect the spider’s feet when playing football, for example? A story about fairness and equal chance; encouraging thirst for knowledge and enabling learning; about not getting discouraged and overcoming surrounding ignorance. Bonus: two strong female role models. One determined and in control. The other one brave enough to learn from her mistakes.

Little gosling gets super excited every time the hairy godmother appears. We take turns counting up to 20 together with the kids and shouting “goooooal” when Spinderella scores the winning point. He finds it hilarious when Spinderella’s family counts everything in “lots” and “loads” and shouts “down with numbers!”. I love it when mummy spider respects Spinderella’s knowledge and takes her guidance, as well as the playful positive strong image school and learning this book portrays. We know now what spiders eat and the use of “up/down with” to express like and dislike. I love little gosling’s habit of repeating the new information and explaining it to me and his daddy again and again.. So sweet! 

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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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