BFFs Gerald and Piggie (I Am Invited to a Party! and There Is a Bird on Your Head!, rev. 1/08) are back in their fifth and sixth easy-reader episodes. The pair's friendship is put to the test in My New Toy when elephant Gerald accidentally breaks Piggie's prized possession. Their spat follows a familiar arc: anger and sadness, tears and regret; all ends well, thanks to a squirrel's intervention, and the two conclude: "Friends are more fun than toys." In the companion volume, Piggie and Gerald watch as a squirrel surprises an unsuspecting pal; it looks like fun, so they give it a go. The game doesn't work too well, however, if both players lie in wait for each other. While Gerald panics-"Where is Piggie?...Maybe a giant bird...flew off with her!"-Piggie gets sidetracked ("I am hungry for lunch"); their silly overreactions are classic-cartoon funny. The simple speech-balloon text uses a fair amount of repetition to encourage new readers, and Willems skillfully conveys mood and tone through type size and his characters' expressive body language. This series' broadly sketched, satisfying dramas are just right for readers beginning to venture out on their own.—Horn Book
Two new additions to the Theodor Seuss Geisel Award winning Elephant and Piggie series. In I Love My New Toy!, Piggie has a great new toy, although she's not exactly sure what it does. Elephant thinks that perhaps it's a throwing toy. And throw it he does, right up in the air, and then it smashes in two pieces. Uh-oh. At first it seems as though there will be a break in the friendship as well as a broken toy. Elephant's "sorry" is not accepted by Piggie, though they do share a few tears. When Squirrel comes around and spots the toy as one of the "break-and-snap" variety, showing it's as good as new, the friends soon realize that playing together is more fun than any old toy. This offers plenty of opportunity for new readers to learn useful words like sad and mad, but the charm comes in the way Willems captures the emotions of young children, sometimes with a line of dialogue ("You broke it!"), and sometimes with an artful drawn line that says as much as words.—Booklist
In classic Willems style, the characters' expressions and body language carry both stories, with the deceptively simple line art saying far more than the slight, though whimsical, texts. When Gerald accidentally breaks Piggie's new toy, he is by turns ashamed, chagrined, and apologetic. Piggie is mad, sad, and finally embarrassed (a squirrel shows them that the "broken toy" is of the "break-and-snap" variety). The pals then decide that playing together is more fun than playing with a toy anyway. In the second title, the two watch a squirrel surprise a friend by jumping out from behind a rock. Mischievous Gerald and Piggie then plan together how to "surprise" one another in the same way. They sit behind opposite sides of a large stone and wait to be surprised. And wait. And wait. And worry. Savvy readers will know exactly what happens when each friend thinks that the other has left. These masterful mini-dramas will delight and amuse easy-reader and picture-book audiences, alike.—SLJ
