I Love My New Book!

I have a new favorite book. (I was going to qualify that sentence by saying that it's my new favorite book for kids, but this book delights me every time I read it, so I took the "for kids" out.)



In I Love My New Toy!, Mo Willems tells the story of Piggie, who, as you probably guessed, has a new toy. He's excited about it and shows it to his friend, an elephant named Gerald. Gerald breaks the toy. Uh-oh. A broken toy. Does this mean a broken friendship too?

The drawings are simple, as is the dialog, yet both clearly and endearingly capture the wide range of emotions around the circumstances in the story, from delight to excitement to anger to sadness to hope to...well, maybe you'll have to see what else there is.

Little kids have lots of emotions that they haven't necessarily learned how to articulate. Piggie and Gerald do know how to express their emotions and they do it so well. I wish this book had been around when my kids were growing up. Never mind that, I wish it had been around when I was growing up. But it's here now.

Mo Willems has a series of books about Piggie and Gerald, as well as Knuffle Bunny and others. This one is my favorite, though if you are in your local library or bookstore, you can see which is your favorite.