Pigs Make Me Sneeze!

AH-CHOO! Correlation does not equal causation in this tale. When Piggie's approach coincides with a sneezing fit, Gerald leaps to the conclusion that he's allergic to pigs, and therefore to his best friend. But it turns out he is also allergic to Doctor Cat! Or is he...

Think Dick and Jane. Or, nowadays, think Dick and Jane with rhyming to make phonics. They have boring little stories that clearly repeat a lot of words for the sake of repeating them. I mean, they try, they really do, but there's only so much most authors can do with a list of 300 words, most of them short. These books are HARD to write.

Consequently, when your kid or student has outgrown a particular early reader, they're done with it. These books aren't REAL literature, after all. And real books are what kids REALLY want to read. We keep telling them to slog through the boring early readers and hope they take pride in the reading itself, but they WANT to read a good story.

Enter Elephant and Piggie. I don't know HOW Mo Willems does it, show more but with a few words and some simple drawings he's able to make these amazingly funny stories. I'm 26 years old, and *I* look forward to a new Elephant and Piggie book! These books last. You can use them as early readers. You can read them to younger children. Your early reader will read them again and again - which is great, because reading a text a second or third (or tenth) time is essential for building literacy skills. Plus, the text consists entirely of dialog. Hysterical dialog. So when you read - even as an early reader! - you have to ham it up. A lot. (The pictures help tell you the mood.) With any luck, this will help prevent kids from developing that monotonous drone so many of them have when they read aloud. YOU know the one, the one that can turn even the most exciting fight scene into a dirge? Dirges at least have melody.... And the pictures are just right too - first, they're super funny (Gerald's face when he decides he can't be near his best friend is classic) and second they provide enough clues to help the slower reader without telling the whole story. Your kid HAS to read the words to know what's going on, unlike in many books where they can look at the pictures and start guessing.

I can't praise these books highly enough. BUY THEM. Buy them for you. Buy them for your local school. Buy them for your kid.

The only problem I have with them is that they aren't available in paperback. Bummer. But they're pretty inexpensive for hardcover.

As for this particular book, it's not quite as funny as the others, but they set a pretty high bar. Best scene? Either the one where Gerald explains to Doctor Cat that "Pigs make me sneeze. And PIGGIE is a pig!" or the one where Piggie puts on a helmet in preparation for Gerald's next sneeze, but then Gerald gives this teeny tiny little -choo at the end of it. show less

Gerald the elephant can't stop sneezing and discovers that he's allergic to his best friend Piggie, and might never get to see him again. Elephant hurls Piggie up and down and around the pages with his gigantic sneezes. The first sneeze begins as a modest "aaa," covering three pages as it grows and ends in an enourmous "CHOOOO!!!" that takes up a whole spread. This style makes for a fantastic read aloud for a group, and children will love reading the sneezes for themselves, too. Typical to the Elephant and Piggie series style, the two main characters are outlined in coloredpencil and filled in with solid color that matches their corresponding speech bubbles. The actual sentences they speak are short (no more than 8 words) and printed in show more large text for high visibility. The page backgrounds are plain white and there are never more than two characters on a page, allowing beginning readers to focus on the words without distraction. The Elephant and Piggie series of easy readers is a crowd favorite and this installment will not disappoint. Recommended for ages 4-8. show less

I love Piggy and Elephant books. I think they are so creative and funny; they always make you laugh because one of them is always upset about something but in the end it always all works out. I would love to read these to the preschoolers and even toddlers; it would be fun to act out what they do in the story.

Elephant and Piggie strike again! This book is full of humor, after all who is really allergic to their best friend!? It is fun to read this book to children because they know Gerald is wrong but know what is going to happen. I love watching their faces trying to make predictions. Like the other Elephant and Piggie books, the two pals have a comical relationship that is easy to follow. Elephant and Piggie will definitely be in my house and classroom in the future.

An elephant, Gerald, worries that he's become allergic to his best friend Piggie, but is delighted to discover that he merely has a cold. I asked for this reader's advisory as if I was picking a book for myself as a child, and the librarian had a number of great suggestions -- this one caught my eye with its minimalist but distinctive look. It's a comic that reads almost like a storyboard. With the brisk pace, the emotional rollercoaster of the story, and several huge sneezes, this would be a wonderful book to read aloud!

Mo Willems teaches us that everything is not what it seems. There could be another thing that’s really causing the problem in any situation. This was a good message but the delivery of it was weak. Gerald couldn’t figure out why he was sneezing so he thought it was the people around him when really it was just a cold. I didn’t get the “aha” feeling of what Gerald’s real problem behind why he was sneezing so much. Therefore it didn’t entertain me in the end.