It's good for kids to re-read the same books over and over again. When you're learning something now, you have to do it more than once. but not so much that they think they can look at the picture and not bother with those troublesome words. But while the pictures are so active and engaging and funny and dramatic, they provide a LITTLE bit of help to the shaky reader.

Secondly, the pictures are active and engaging and funny and dramatic. Or Elephant will say something and Piggie will repeat it to agree with him. Piggie will say something, and then Elephant will repeat it in a disbelieving way. Exciting, funny dialog with LOTS AND LOTS OF EXCLAMATION POINTS!!!! Ever see a first grader write? EVERY! SENTENCE! NEEDS! AN! EXCLAMATION! POINT!!!! YES IT DOES! You can't help but ham it up when you read, no matter HOW much you hate reading.Īnd when there is repetition - as there needs to be, to help children practice - it's natural. Elephant and Piggie! This series does everything right.įirst of all, the text is all dialog. Gotta indoctrinate them young to think reading is dull and boring! Now your kid will always be able to read -at words, but they'll read them all in a dreadful monotone, ill-suited for anything other than the phone book. Or they do the same thing, but with rhyming: See the cat. Run, Spot, run! Run, run, run! Short, easy to read, lots of practice with those three words. I bet you can quote Dick and Jane here: See Spot. They have to be easy to read, so they include a lot of very short, repetitititive sentences. He lives in Brooklyn, New York with his family.Įarly readers can be such a pain. Mo began his career as a writer and animator for television, garnering 6 Emmy awards for his writing on Sesame Street, creating Nickelodeon's The Off-Beats, Cartoon Network’s Sheep in the Big City and head-writing Codename: Kids Next Door. Mo’s work books have been translated into a myriad of languages, spawned animated shorts and theatrical musical productions, and his illustrations, wire sculpture, and carved ceramics have been exhibited in galleries and museums across the nation.

The New York Times Book Review called Mo “the biggest new talent to emerge thus far in the 00's.' In addition to such picture books as Leonardo the Terrible Monster, Edwina the Dinosaur Who Didn’t Know She Was Extinct, and Time to Pee, Mo has created the Elephant and Piggie books, a series of early readers, and published You Can Never Find a Rickshaw When it Monsoons, an annotated cartoon journal sketched during a year-long voyage around the world in 1990-91. #1 New York Times Bestselling author and illustrator Mo Willems is best known for his Caldecott Honor winning picture books Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus and Knuffle Bunny: a cautionary tale.

Today I Will Fly! by Mo Willems