Themes: Friendship, Animals, Teamwork, and Excellent Read-Aloud

The story wraps up with a sweet, surprising resolution that includes compromise on behalf of both of these appealing characters.Īuthor: Mo Willems Illustrator: Mo Willems Published: 2007, 64 pages The story moves along with Piggie trying to fly and Gerald wondering when his little friend will smarten up. Gerald immediately tells her that impossible, and perhaps she ought to have her head examined. In Today I Will Fly! Piggie comes along and announces she will fly today. The main characters are a little, optimistic pig and a rather seasoned, droll elephant named Gerald. Willems does it effortlessly with Piggie and Elephant. So many of the learn to read books are dreadfully boring, because it is hard to repeat words, keep the vocabulary simple, all the while creating a great story. The last is what makes this series so special. In the Elephant and Piggie books, Willems effortlessly combines elements required for this learning to read genre, like word repetition and sight word inclusion, with comedy, terrific illustrations and a great story-line. Seuss book, similar in size and feel, with a bit less text than the longer-winded Seuss books. Today I Will Fly! is the first in this welcome new learn-to-read series by Mo Willems. For all those pigeons fans out there, check out the endpapers (the inside, back cover of the books).

Your young reader should be able to read it by themselves after only a few shared readings, the picture clues and vocabulary choice and repetition are that good.

In a few short pages, with spare prose, Willems has created a suspenseful story that will have you and your young reader hooked from start to finish.

It will have your reader laughing out loud.

This is a brilliantly conceived new learn to read series by the author of the Pigeon books (Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus).

Elephant and Piggie: Today I Will Fly is a cute story about friends and how they learn to compromise.

Today i will fly elephant and piggie