MotherReader

If you’re going to buy your beginning reader one present this holiday season… then buy Magnetix! (One present? C’mon.) Okay, but if you’re going to buy him or her, say, two or three presents, then certainly consider the Elephant & Piggie series from Mo Willems. These books for the earliest readers will have you and your child in stitches while the learning just slips in.

Since the books are not that new, and I’m such a Mo fan, you may wonder why I haven’t mentioned them before now. Well, I had committed to doing a tri-review of the four titles with the fantastic team at Seven Impossible Things. In like, August. Delays ensued, other projects were pursued, Robert’s Snow intruded, but the in-depth review is now up and ready for your personal enjoyment. It is a thorough and even intellectual review — well, disregarding the use of the words dude and WORD. It includes the following sentence, which took four days to germinate in my brain and come into flower on my drive to work:

Now, I don’t think that Mo woke up one morning and said, “I’m going to write a set of beginning readers that addresses the psychological ambivalence of today’s parents who want to provide mature guidance to better enable the growth of their offspring, and yet are eager to embrace their own inner child — and in doing so, to embrace their actual son or daughter with a joyful and playful spirit.”

Where does this fantastic phrase fit in? Find out in the Elephant & Piggie review and see if Mo owes me lunch.