I enjoyed Tovah Yavin’s recent blog post “Helping Your Child Get Started – With Books!” so much that I wanted to build on it. Tovah recommends the Berenstain Bear series. I wholeheartedly agree. A friend lent me the entire set, and all my children devoured it.
A whole set of books offers a special kind of reading experience for younger children. Children are compelled by positive emotions whilst reading the first title—laughter, excitement, mystery, etc.—to attempt a second book, knowing it will be like the first. Then the whole set becomes both a challenge and an adventure. By the time they finish the last book, you can be sure that the child will go back to the first one or just pick and choose and read the set again and again.
Related: Literature Genres for Children – A Complicated Map
One of the great joys of life is to see a small child sitting on the sofa amongst a pile of books, lost in another world.
Mo Willem’s Elephant & Piggie Series
If you have a child, or if a child might ever visit your home, a must-have book set is the Elephant & Piggie series by Mo Willems.
Mo Willems had achieved his legendary status long before he wrote this beginner reader series. Writing for Sesame Street and then writing the Knuffle Bunny and Pigeon books and many more, he had already won our hearts. And he has many more accomplishments, including multiple Theodore Seuss Geisel awards.
Elephant & Piggie books have a kind of magic for children who struggle to read. Each page, once deciphered, is a reward. There is a joke of sorts on every page, whether it is in the dialogue or a facial expression. These books are real page-turners. Adults will come and look over the child’s shoulder or will keenly plop down on the couch with one of these books. They are that much fun.
Elephant and Piggie and their friends mirror the emotions that small children experience from day to day. “Relatable” is an inadequate descriptor. Really, the child reading the book feels understood.
There are many great books that try to help children connect with their feelings. I’m thinking especially of The Feelings Series by Trace Moroney. These are excellent in exploring and validating children’s emotions, particularly the more difficult ones.
Willems connects kids with their everyday emotions. He makes it so much fun to stand back and observe that experience, giving the child a fresh perspective ready for the next time it happens to them.
There’s the devastation of finding out your best friend has been having a great time with someone new in My New Friend Is So Fun.
Or the shock of breaking someone else’s new toy in I Love My New Toy!
Or being really terrible at sport in Watch Me Throw the Ball.
Learning to understand negative behaviors of other children in A Big Guy Took My Ball.
And the anxiety of the unknown in I Am Invited to a Party.
There is even an existential crisis in We Are in a Book.
How to Use These Books With Beginner Readers
First, enjoy reading them aloud to the child. This will be a lot of fun. Kids respond well to an adult’s positive emotions when reading. You can add your own funny voices…or not. Either way, it will still be funny. Don’t be surprised if you are asked to read it again. One of the titles, We Are In A Book, is written to encourage the reader to immediately return to the start.
Next, leave the book lying around the house and see if the child picks it up. Many kids will have a go at reading it by themselves if they already know the story. The dialogue has plenty of repetition and is humorously executed so they learn key words. A child can memorize much of the dialogue, but the books are up around 60 pages long so there will definitely be some actual reading going on.
Another great strategy is to share the reading. The child can choose to be either Piggie or Gerald, and the adult will read the other character. The dialogue is printed in different colored speech bubbles so there’s no doubt about who owns the dialogue.
The Secret of Learning to Read
A great way to get into an argument with another adult is to start discussing parenting. Teaching children how to read is one such topic. Which program are we using? Phonics? Immersion in literature? Sound it out, or use the picture cues? Sequential structured programs, or learning through play?
I’m no teacher, nor am I a child development expert, but I do know that joyful reading experiences motivate a child to seek more. That’s success in my books.
So, go out and buy a full Elephant & Piggie set at your local bookshop as soon as your budget allows. The next time a kid visits your house, they will have a joyful reading experience and be a little more likely to grow up a book nerd. And isn’t that what we all want for the next generation?
