Sunday, October 2, 2011

Children's Corner: Today I Will Fly


Review: I don't think there is a Mo Willems book that we haven't read and thoroughly enjoyed. I will admit this is our first Elephant and Piggie book though. I can say there will be more in our future. Mo Willems has a way of making a children's book enjoyable to parents with his great sense of humor. Piggie is determined to fly, while Elephant keeps telling Piggie that he can't. Eventually, Piggie asks for help and begins to fly. By the end of the book, Elephant tells Piggie he's going to fly tomorrow.

What I like about the book is the idea of perseverance. Even though Elephant thought Piggie couldn't fly, Piggie didn't give up. He kept trying until he was able to do it. He didn't listen to his friends, he believed in himself. At 6 years old, I'm trying to instill this in my daughter, that you don't always have to follow your friends or believe what your friends say. If you think you can do it, then try it.
I think this is a great message to send to young kids and hopefully it'll carry with them as they grow up.

My daughter is now in 1st grade and we have been encouraging her to pick books that she will be able to read on her own. Her teacher also has a rule that when picking a book out at the library if you can't read at least 5 words on the page, you pick out a different book. I think that is brilliant. The school library is also now allowing the 1st graders to pick up to 5 books when they check out. The reasoning behind this is, there are so many books that don't get checked out and they want to get kids to read more. Again, brilliant. She's been able to help me read books in bits and pieces before but Today I Will Fly is the first book she was able to read to me all on her own. I can't tell you how happy both of us were but I might have been a tad more happy being an avid reader. She's always loved us reading to her but I'm hoping that this now gives her more confidence to start reading more books on her own.

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