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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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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The story captures in all its details the emotions Jabari goes through in attempting his first jump from the diving board. His initial courage (“how hard can it be?!”), his doubts, his fear and anxiety, finding excuses to delay the jump, whilst trying to put on a brave face, the courage he draws from his dad’s empathetic attitude and finally, the excitement of the accomplishment. Love dad’s attitude – encouraging in the key moments, without being intrusive or insistent. So effective! What a great bond the two of them must share! Great for modelling parental behaviour when little ones deal with challenges. 

After reading this, little gosling has become fond of squeezing. He gets it could be a part of a secret language we can develop together. And he’s been asking whether we could find a pool where young kids like him can swim and do exercises in water (alongside mummy and/or daddy, certainly). So, there’s some homework for me

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Sully feels anxious and intimidated to compete against his colleagues in the sea school contest. He’s not particularly good in any of the disciplines in the competition (that is being polite). He tries to avoid participating, but Miss Trout encourages everyone to just try their best and he feels obliged to do so, all the while fearing and knowing he’ll come last. He wishes he could have one of the talents his colleagues possess.. Until he amazes everyone with his ability to change colour and become invisible in the sea, in face of danger from being caught by a diver. He realizes, then, how special he is :). 

This is a cute, lovely rhymed story, populated with sea creatures, full of emotion, with brightly coloured illustrations. Sully is relatable and one can’t help wanting to hug and comfort him. For some reason, little gosling is hooked on Miss Trout, the teacher. He gets excited at every start of a race “On your marks, ready, get set… go!!!” and he’s fascinated by the shadow of the boat underwater. He calls it “the book with the shadow” On one of our readings, I told him the words in the book : “you are amazing” and he said “no, I am not amazing, I am a baby!” :))) 

Little gosling has his own little pink seahorse buddy, which he carefully chose himself after our visit summer 2020 to Sea Life Blankenberge, where we saw some less glamorously coloured seahorses. 

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The second time, we paused a bit more on some of the interactive elements of the Dinosaur Gallery. The virtual moving Pachycephalosaurus was still an object of fascination. Therefore, taking turns, his daddy and I employed a little trick to try and make little gosling feel a little bit less scared of it. I sat in front of him, on the specially designated spot and responded to its every move with a roar and a claw-like hands movement of my own. It must be designed to play this game, since it seemed like it stopped disconcertedly, wondering every time I did that. I kept doing that defiantly and very vocally until it smashed the virtual glass panel that separated us. I repeated the trick several times whilst little gosling came closer and closer to me and started mimicking me. It frightened him less and less, although the smashing still made us all jump :)))). 

We played at identifying the dinosaur skeletons (and marvelled at the very long tail of the diplodocus) and matching the skull molds to the dinosaurs. We played with the levers mimicking the power and easiness of movement of the femur of upright vs. sprawling posture dinosaurs. We measured our heights against that of some of the dinosaurs. 

When little gosling asked to take a break and rest for a moment and looked up at me: “mummy, do you have something to read?” I brandished with a proud smirk a new acquisition: Giles Andreae and David Wojtowycz’ “Mad about dinosaurs”. It was a surprise I had held in store just for this occasion. We quietly sat down and read all the quatrains in the book, looking around for the corresponding dinosaur skeletons. 

Much like the other books in the “Mad about..” series, this one describes in verse and super-colourful and suggestive illustrations twelve types of the most known dinosaurs, including the T-Rex, the triceratops, the stegosaurus, the diplodocus, the brontosaurus or the velociraptor. The star of the book was however the lesser known (to us) ankylosaurus, whose body is protected by an armour, so if you’re a T-Rex and unwise enough to attack it, you’ll end up breaking your teeth :))). Consequently, from then on, on our games of “if you were an animal, what would you be?”, the ankylosaurus has come up repeatedly. Why? Because he is obviously not afraid of the fierce T-Rex, like most of us would be if it was still roaming the Earth. The short poems and funny illustrations make for a playful and thoroughly enjoyable learning, for both mummy and little gosling, with just a nutshell of information easy to absorb by young minds. 

The reading finished, we moved on to “The living planet” exhibition, identifying animals (“I like best the…., because it is….”, pointing to them) and dwelling on the different habitats. Great learning opportunity all the photo visuals and the regrouping of animals per habitat. 

Little gosling sat down for another rest pretty soon and luckily chose to do it inside the Tetrapodium and Arthropodium – a small room exhibiting skeletons and sketches, all in ivory and black, of four and six legged animals. We played, taking turns at identifying and finding the different animals: “ I see a tortoise” – “Here”. “I see a rhino” – ‘There”, running around the room, with little going pointing excitedly at every find. We must have been at it for 15-20 minutes minimum, covering almost all of the animals in the room. 

We ended our tour with a visit to the museum cafeteria and a tasty sandwich. I’m sure we’ll be back again soon, as it was lots of fun.

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“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! 

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Until such time we go to the forest (one without mean wolves!!!, only with friendly wolves) to pick up sticks and twigs to make our own witch broom and wand, he runs around the house in complete outfit: our (much smaller and different, imperfect-looking) broom; a big bucket for a cauldron; one of his daddy’s fancy hats, almost invariably covering half his face; and a spatula for a wand It’s cute, albeit a bit anxiety-inducing :))) seeing him ride the broom up and down the living room and struggling to hold everything together, just  like the witch in the story. 

The wonderfully catchy rhyme (one of those that stick inadvertently and definitively onto your cortex) goes about the witch losing some of her items, one after the other. As she does, she repays the animals who help her get them back by taking them on her broom. Until… the broom snaps in two!!! A chase ensues, with a dragon and a terrible four-headed monster involved. But the story has a happy ending! The witch gets to show she can do magic, when all her gratefulness translates into a plane comfortable-like broom. 

A truly engaging read-aloud, it is fast-paced, full of suspense, loud, scary, funny, happy. Little gosling has fun reproducing all the sounds in the book. I love his shrieks and croaks :)). He never lets me forget going in a lower, scary voice for the dragon and gets so excited with the jumping; the one that gets the broom to break and the jumps for joy at seeing the newly refurbished broom. He’s truly fascinated by the cauldron and he uses his most mysterious tone to recite the witch’s spell: iggety ziggety…..

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I love it that there’s a book in the story, where the little tortoise learns all about travelling to space. Such a subtle idea of books as a knowledge repository! And its perception of the surroundings is just heart melting: a clocktower looks like a rocket, a sand pit feels like a desert, forgotten buckets are pyramids. The story takes place at night-time and illustrations are filled with gorgeous sky colours and twinkling lights. Add to this the fact that the small tortoise recycles materials out of garbage bins (where she has made herself a cosy home) to craft its astronaut costume and the different means of transportation to cross the desert, the ocean and to fly up what it imagines to be a rocket. There’s so much going on visually, so many conversation openers.

It ticks many of little gosling’s “I love” boxes: tortoises, journey to space, stars, rockets and astronauts, candles, hot air balloons and friendship. So many occasions for excitement and deliciously heart-warming laughs and squeals during reading time. You should see him trying to blow out little tortoise’s candle on every page :)))). Or listen to the disconcerted and surprised pitchy “noo” at the imagined rocket’s lack of cockpit and other rockety stuff.. 

I got the book because of its space travel references and it was spot on! Little gosling has not shown great interest in non-fiction books so far, therefore all our space books are wrapped in stories. And this one is very relatable and sweet. Plus, I find David Litchfield’s night time and woods’ illustrations special and incredibly appealing. 

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What a wonderful first encounter with monsters for my little one!! A story about challenging the way in which things are done and accepting there are many different ways in which things can happen. I love this message of keeping an open, flexible mind. A story about going after what you really want, instead of waiting for things to happen to you. And there’s so much emotional richness in Marilyn’s character..

I first heard it on @Julieslibraryshow and thought little gosling too young for it. I feared it would be a bit too long.. But here we are six months later: little gosling absolutely loves it. He asks for it repeatedly, he listens through to the end, he engages with the story, asking questions and identifying details from the storyline in the illustrations. He registered that Marylin’s brother is quite unkind to her (he repeats my words: “what a mean thing to say” when the brother suggests the monster didn’t want to be Marilyn’s friend and went away), but that her parents are empathetic and loving.  

No idea what has him so hooked; maybe the cute monster Marilyn gets in the end with his lovely wings and soft voice; maybe the idea of having a friend just for oneself who is there all the time. One day he told me laughingly: “mummy, you look like a monster!” I took it as a compliment, given how much he loves the book. The monsters come in all shapes and sizes, but the illustrations make them out gentle, loving, protective; the kind to spend all your time with and cuddle close at night. Another day, little gosling was talking to his dad about all kinds of flying beings. Upon hearing that wings help them fly, he told his daddy he also had wings and was a monster :P. So much processing is going on in his little brain!!! 

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First ones were our foam bath-time letter and numbers. We’ve been playing with them in the bathtub since little gosling could sit on his bum unassisted. To this day, it’s one of his favourite things to do. We started by just putting them up on the bathroom tiles one by one. At one point, I started identifying the numbers and letters, reciting words that started with the different letters. Then we used them for colour recognition and for many months now, we’ve been working on letter recognition. I would ask him to give me a red one; or “F for flower; and fox, and finger; and foot; and food”; or “S for snake, for snail, for star or for sunflower”. Truth be told, it’s probably much more fun when he plays with his dad. There’s still some letter recognition involved (in Romanian), but they get to compete at throwing and sticking them onto the wall opposite the bathtub, with the sweetest, funniest squeaks and squeals :). 

Next came a wooden alphabet puzzle, when he was around 18 months. Little gosling loves puzzles, he gets very focused on the job. At the time, this was one of the more complex puzzles he had. It took him some days of work, but he managed quickly to finalise it without help. I was so much in awe with his visual memory, no way he could remember all the information he was getting from me about the letters. I remember us playing with the puzzle over his second Christmas. He was able to recognise a couple of letters: A (for his mummy’s name); R for rhino; T (for his name). I thought that was so amazing :))). 

We started, then, playing with his foam letter playmat. This must have been some weeks after his second birthday. He helped me dismantle it and put it back together every time we cleaned the floor or/and washed it. I’d ask him to give me the letters one by one. R for rhino, X, L for lullaby, K for kiss, M for mom, W for whale, waterfall, watercan and waterlily, and Z for zebra were the easiest ones. He would get those without any thinking. He struggled with N (even though N is for No :)))), which he mixed up with Z a lot (they really do look alike, don’t they?!). Similarly, he got confused with J and U; he associated both with “umbrella” (again, quite understandable, right?!). From there on, it was a matter of a few weeks before he could identify most letters on his own. We used associations with characters from the books we read or even with the book titles. B for boat (and badger/bursucul from Peter Bentley’s and Charles Fudge series with Bramble the badger); C for cat; D for dingo (from the dingos in Rachel Bright and JIm Field’s “The Koala who could”); G for giraffe (for “Giraffes can’t dance) or gruffalo; H for hug (one of my favourites :)); S for snake and “The Secret Sky Garden”. At this point, I, Q, U were still difficult (“I don’t know these one, mummy”) and some confusion between several letters still persisted: M vs. N, K vs.X, occasionally C vs. G and O vs zero. 

With two years and two months approximately, little gosling started identifying and pointing to numbers and letters on the street, on posters or on labels. I remember how surprised and amazed we were when, one day, at the lunch table, he started reading (right to left!!! :)))): A for mummy’s name; P for penguin; S for snake. We had a bottle of SPA mineral water on the table. He went on: penguin, U, rhino, “efelu” (excavator in his language :P). Pure. Still on the water bottle. That was pretty awesome and both his daddy and I were very excited about it. 

Around two months later, I got him this beautifully colored wooden alphabet crocodile puzzle during our only week of holidays this year, in a little shop in the Moselle valley in Germany. I thought he would love it; partly because he loves puzzles, but also because there is this French nursery rhyme about a crocodile that he loves so much. He wasn’t so much into doing the puzzle the first time we took it out; he just wanted to gather all the pieces together into a bowl and carry them around. He didn’t look at it for weeks. 

One day I took it out: “let’s try and do it with an abc book” and… it worked. We opened the book on the playmat and he starts looking for the puzzle pieces containing each letter, in the order in which they appear in the book. Mummy’s role is one of support. I turn the pages and make sure he looks first at the page on the left side. He’s always going ahead and looking at the first letter that appears, on the right-hand side. Every two-three letters he excitedly calls on his dad: “daddy, look what I did!”. He’s so very satisfied when he finishes his puzzle, jumping around the crocodile, laughingly :).  

We started with Rosalind Beardshaw’s “ABC – A Walk in the Countryside. Such a sweet and engaging book! I love the idea of an ABC book telling a story and little gosling loves Rosalind Beardshaw’s Lola, so…I had to have it! :)) It runs through the alphabet whilst two kids wander about happily playing, observing and marveling at nature’s small creations. Even in what looks like chilly, rainy weather :P. The colours are warm and the images are playful, full of joy and of wonderful child-like joie de vivre. Little gosling’s favourites are M for mole, because of the mounds of dirt they make in the grass (of which we saw many during one of our outings on a nature reserve) and Y for yacht, that the kids are pulling along with a string from the river bank. I for ivy and J for jacket are close seconds and the most difficult one seems to be Q for queue. 

At one point, he wanted another book and went for Tim Hopgood’s ABC book. This one also has the small letters and it includes words that we don’t encounter that much otherwise, such as “newt”, “island”, “quail” or “xerus”!!! The illustrations are brightly colored and vary in size from half a page to a two-pager. For “Y” there’s a small mirror included that little gosling invariably and excitedly calls a “sun” :)))). I love “U”; he looks at the “universe” every time and asks “where is the universe, mummy?”. The universe is all around us, everywhere, I tell him. And then he recalls mummy telling him during some of our bedtime routines that the “universe is always growing”.. 

More recently – yes, we’ve been doing the crocodile each day for a while now -, he switched to Virginie Morgand’s “ABC off to sea!” He loves the dolphins, the mermaids, the wooden-legged pirates and the unusual names: Ivor, the parrot and Ulysses, the cat. 

Every once in a while, when we read together, he starts identifying the letters in random words here and there! He’s getting quite quick at it! 

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