Knuffle Bunny timeline: Read all 3 Knuffle Bunny books and have your littles tell you what the main events were for each book. After reading both stories, I had my little tell me how they were alike and different and I wrote his thinking on a Venn Diagram on our board. Story comparison: We read and compared “I will Take a Nap” with “Don’t Let the Pigeon Stay Up Late”. Also the way Willems uses speech bubbles makes the reader feel like the characters are talking directly at them which makes them feel like they are a part of the story, keeping them both engaged and excited about the text.I figured it was time for another author study, and who better to choose than the legendary Mo Willems! Author of the Knuffle Bunny trilogy and the Pigeon books as well as the Elephant and Piggy series, his adorable illustrations and easy text make his early reader books both accessible to beginning readers and also fun to read! Let’s just call him the new (more PC) Dr. Overall I would recommend this book because it teaches kids about reading with emotion. Children find this particularly funny because they feel like they are “in on” the joke with Elephant that Piggie does not understand. In the end, when Elephant sees Piggie in the real world he calls him “turnip head” and Piggie is confused. This book could also be a good tool to teach children about the difference between a thought bubble and a speech bubble. All of the pages that are this light green shade are part of the dream, which contrast with the real world scenes which contain white backgrounds. When Piggie was first introduced he was in a thought bubble that was a light shade of green. It is clear at this point that this could not be happening in real life, but if readers look carefully they can notice that there were clues that this was a dream from the beginning. Soon it is revealed that all of this snoring nonsense occurred in Elephant’s dream when Piggie begins to float.Įlephant then begins to hallucinate images of Piggie with a turnip head. He uses smaller descending words to demonstrate Piggie falling into a deeper quieter sleep, contrasting this with colorful large typography for his loud snoring outbursts. Willems also does a great job of using the typography to give the readers clues as to how they should read the text aloud.

In addition to this on some pages he uses additional elements to convey emotion, such as a soft glow used to represent the warmth of friendship when Piggie joins him.

Willems simple characters convey lots of emotion though their facial expressions (eyes, mouth, etc.). He is soon joined by Piggie who wants to take a nap with him. This book tells the story of a cranky Elephant who goes to take a nap. I Will Take a Nap! by Mo Willems is part of the Elephant and Piggie collection.