Halloween is coming and I want to share with you a book that I love reading with my girls at this time of year: Room on the Broom. Julia Donaldson is the author behind The Gruffalo and The Stick Man (among other great books) and Axel Scheffler brings her stories to life with his fabulous illustrations.

What’s it about?

A witch and her cat are flying in the sky on a broomstick when it gets very windy and the witch loses her hat and some other objects. Luckily, three helpful animals find the missing items but will she find room (space) on her broom for all of them to have a ride and what happens when the witch meets a scary dragon?

Language

The language in this story is not basic at times but this won’t stop you or your little bookworm from enjoying it. Just make sure you check the meaning and pronunciation of some of the vocabulary before you read it together. Remember that you can listen to a native speaker reading the story first on YouTube. The story rhymes and there is a lot of repetition – a great way for you to work on pronunciation and also to memorise the story together with your little one. What’s more, if you have Amazon Prime Video, you can watch the film based on the book. It is 25 minutes long and fun listening practice for you both!

Message of the story

I would recommend this story to children aged 3–6 . It is a great introduction to the topic of kindness – what it means to be kind and how we can show kindness. It is also a good way to show children that they shouldn’t judge someone by their appearance alone or, as we commonly say in English, “Don’t judge a book by its cover”. Not all witches are bad witches – there are some very kind ones around! 😊

Happy Halloween! 🎃