The Knuffle Bunny Trilogy

Reaching for his beloved books

Plot Summary
     Knuffle Bunny: A Cautionary Tale.
Trixie lives in Brooklyn, NY with her mom and dad. She loves helping her dad run errands, like going to the Laundromat. Trixie always brings along her beloved Knuffle Bunny, but when he gets left behind, she can't find the words to tell her dad what happened, instead trying to make him understand "Aggle flaggle klabble!" Will Trixie's father understand her and help her find Knuffle Bunny again?
     Knuffle Bunny Too: A Case of Mistaken Identity.
Trixie is excited to start school and show off Knuffle Bunny to all her friends. When she gets to class, she is upset to find Sonja has her own Knuffle Bunny! They fight and the teacher takes their bunnies away - will they get them back and become friends?
     Knuffle Bunny Free: An Unexpected Diversion.
Trixie is older now, and her family is going to visit Oma and Opa in Holland. Knuffle Bunny comes along for the trip, but never makes it off the plane. Her grandparents try to make her happy with a replacement Knuffle Bunny, one that walks and dances and speaks (in Dutch). It’s cool, but it’s not Knuffle Bunny. Is Trixie mature enough to live without her best and oldest friend?

Critical Analysis
The Knuffle Bunny trilogy consists of three very unique books, with Willems drawing his illustrations on top of black and white photographs. This is something that might not be noticed by children, but it's such a pleasure for adults to look at, because there's so much to see in each photograph, and Willems' illustrations add even more to the pages. No detail gets by Willems - he adds his characters' shadows to make it seem like they actually belong in each picture. The font is perfect all around: it looks great with the drawing style, is laid out nicely on the page, and is big enough to children to see. Even those too young to read are pulled in by the words because, at least in the case of my son, the large, comic-looking font just begs to be touched! The page backgrounds are muted, solid colors to ensure the text and illustrations take center stage.

Personal Response
Until having a baby, my experience with contemporary picture books has been extremely limited to buying a book for my nephew's birthday and Christmas gifts. The children's lit course I took in undergrad mostly focused on the origins, the classics, and the retellings of fairy tales and more traditional children's literature. Literature for Children and Young Adults (5603), which I took the Fall 2014 semester, really opened my eyes to what's out there today. I'm sure I would have stumbled upon a lot of new books as I browsed the stacks with my son in mind, but the reading list for 5603 was impeccable; I'm keeping it to go back and read other suggestions from it as I have time.
     All that is to say, I never read a Mo Willems books before last semester. The horrors! No, I don't think you're judging me - I literally mean, the horrors! I can't believe I was missing out on such treasures. I read Goldilocks and the Three Dinosaurs for class and fell in love with the whimsy of Willems, then checked out The Pigeon Needs a Bath when I saw it on display at the library. That reminded me that we need mo' Willems (I'm sorry, I had to!) in our lives. We picked out Knuffle Bunny and Knuffle Bunny Free without realizing it was a trilogy, so we requested Knuffle Bunny Too from another branch.
     My 6-month-old seemed to love the illustrations, and when I read it aloud to my 5-year-old stepson, he had fun taking in every aspect of the pictures. He searched for Knuffle Bunny when he was lost, and tried to predict what would happen next based on the drawings. Days after we read them, he was still talking like Trixie in the first book: "Aggle flaggle klabble!"

Reviews & Awards
Knuffle Bunny and Knuffle Bunny Too are both Caldecott Honor books. All three books are New York Times bestsellers. The first book has been made into a short film and a musical, and stuffed Knuffle Bunnies are also available. Willems was a finalist for Illustrator of the Year during Children’s Book Week in 2011.
     A starred review of Knuffle Bunny in School Library Journal raves, “Personalities are artfully created so that both parents and children will recognize themselves within these pages. A seamless and supremely satisfying presentation of art and text.” About Knuffle Bunny Free, the same source says “Willems once again conveys a range of emotions through limited text and outstanding illustrations. His sensitivity to children's needs allows the humor to come through without devaluing the feelings. […] This one is a must-have.”

Read it for yourself!
Willems, Mo. 2004. Knuffle Bunny: A Cautionary Tale. New York: Hyperion Books for Children.
     ISBN 9780786818709
Willems, Mo. 2007. Knuffle Bunny Too: A Case of Mistaken Identity. New York: Hyperion Books
     for Children. ISBN 9781423102991
Willems, Mo. 2010. Knuffle Bunny Free: An Unexpected Diversion. New York: Balzer + Bray.
     ISBN 9780061929588


Right before they came tumblin' down!

The Three Pigs

Plot Summary
Wiesner’s The Three Pigs starts off as the story you know and love - three pigs building houses out of various materials, with a wolf lurking nearby. As soon as the first pig builds his house of straw, however, the wolf huffs, and puffs, and blows the pig right out of the story! The narration continues on and the wolf “ate the pig up” except… there’s no pig. The wolf goes on to the stick house, but the first pig beats him to it. The two pigs escape while the wolf continues to huff and puff and blow the pages out of order! All three pigs are together now, folding a page of the book into a paper airplane to fly around and explore. They land in a nursery rhyme and a dragon tale, bringing characters back to their story with them. The wolf is waiting, but when he huffs and puffs at the third house, it won’t come down, and not just because there’s a dragon inside!

Critical Analysis
This story is a unique spin on the classic three little pigs tale. The beginning is familiar to the reader, but the pigs quickly escape their story to explore a well-known nursery rhyme and other stories. The text changes accordingly, and the pigs bring other characters back to their own story, changing their fates in the process.
     As the pigs leave their own story, the characters are drawn outside of the margins. There are several nearly-blank pages that show the three pigs on a paper airplane, flying away from their story towards anything else. It’s easy to picture this happening in a child’s room as they explore the bookshelves. As the pigs step into the nursery rhyme, they change from their realistic-looking selves into pudgy, cute nursery variations. The text changes as well, from black to purple, from standard fonts to rounded, kid-friendly letters. As soon as the pigs step off the page, they return to themselves, even if that means their head looks realistic while their backs are still cartoons! The pigs transform into black and white line drawings when they visit the dragon’s tale, and the dragon turns colored and scaly when he returns with the pigs to their realm.
     Wiesner does a great job of showing how stories differ in illustration and text. This is a great book to take time to inspect, because there are fun elements to catch as you turn the pages. The blank pages don’t seem empty because the pigs are flying across it on their paper plane, and Wiesner is very skilled with making his drawings look 3D. The pigs are flat when they’re in stories, but as they travel around, they look like they’re outside of the book entirely, looking in with you.

Personal Response
I love how the cover to this book is so misleading - it looks like a tame traditional story because the pigs are drawn so realistically. Then you get the story started and it’s so fun and off the wall! I found it was a hard book to read aloud, because the illustrations demand so much close attention. It’s also a little difficult to keep different voices straight with the dialogue bubbles contrasting with the narration. It’s a great solo read, though, because readers can go at their own pace. I love how the pigs adapt to the different types of stories they stumble into, and I love that Wiesner shows there are many other stories available that the pigs bypass when returning to their own. I think that really hands the story over so the reader can continue it in their own imagination.

Reviews & Awards
David Wiesner won a Caldecott Medal for this book, and has won the award thrice total! Publishers Weekly raved about the book: “Wiesner's brilliant use of white space and perspective (as the pigs fly to the upper right-hand corner of a spread on their makeshift plane, or as one pig's snout dominates a full page) evokes a feeling that the characters can navigate endless possibilities--and that the range of story itself is limitless.” The Horn Book chimes in: “Wiesner may not be the first to thumb his nose at picture-book design rules and storytelling techniques, but he puts his own distinct print on this ambitious endeavor. There are lots of teaching opportunities to be mined here—or you can just dig into the creative possibilities of unconventionality.”

  Connections & Activities
Readers can identify the other stories and nursery rhymes that serve as settings in this book, then brainstorm about where else the pigs could visit. Many fairy tales and nursery rhymes star pigs, so they’ll have a wide selection! Once they pick a different story or two, they can draw the three pigs in a a scene, in the style of the original illustrator.

Read it for yourself!
Wiesner, David. 2001. The Three Pigs. New York: Clarion Books. ISBN 9780618007011

The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs

Plot Summary
Forget everything you think you know about the three little pigs - this is the real story! Alexander T. Wolf (you can call him Al) is tired of everyone thinking he’s a big bad wolf just because he likes to eat cute animals. The truth is, he just needed to borrow a cup of sugar. And since he had a cold, he decided to just walk over to his neighbor’s house. It’s not his fault his sneezes demolish houses - who builds out of straw and sticks? Al went from merely borrowing a cup of sugar to being jailed for “huffing and puffing” - proof that reporters always skew the story!

Critical Analysis
This book isn’t actually by Jon Scieszka, it’s by Alexander Wolf. And because this is his story, told from his point of view, he’s an unreliable narrator. He’s been know throughout history as the bad guy of the story, and even with justice insisting everyone is innocent until proven guilty, you’ll find A. Wolf a little hard to believe. Even so, the way he tells the story is very humorous and very childlike - making up reason after reason for why he did this, and then that, and how it got skewed. I think that is what makes it so appealing to children: the perfect combination of silliness and familiarity, told on their level.
     With a story told from the bad guy’s point of view, you can’t expect bright colors and smooth drawings! Lane Smith’s art fits The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs perfectly. The colors are mostly dark - maroons and burnt oranges, browns and tans. Each picture looks grainy, but on closer inspection, the marks are a lot of texture added to each drawing, like bumps on bricks, needles of hay, woodgrain on the chalkboard frame. The desaturated colors work well with the few samples of newsprint on the covers and at the end of the book. The illustrations seem a little dark for such a humorous story, but they are effective at setting the mood of an unreliable narrator trying to get you to believe his side of the story.
     Publishers Weekly praises the illustrations specifically, saying, “Smith’s highly imaginative watercolors eschew realism, further updating the tale, though some may find their urbane stylization and intentionally static quality mystifyingly adult.” School Library Journal also comments on the overall dark and shadowy drawings, saying, “[…] the bespectacled wolf moves with a rather sinister tonelessness, and his juicy sneezes tear like thunderbolts through a dim, grainy world.”

Personal Response
I loved this book as a child, and was thrilled to discover it’s just as funny now! I read it to my son - he’s only three months old, but so far all the fairy tales I’ve read to him have been fractured fairy tales! As an added bonus, we got to meet Jon Scieszka August 20, 2014 - he’s just as witty in person as in writing.
     I think it’s fun to read fractured fairy tales and compare them with the originals. This book is especially fun because the wolf seems sympathetic, wanting to bake a cake for his granny! It’s interesting to see who kids side with, since most know the other story of the three little pigs, and are now faced with looking at it from the bad guy’s point of view.

Reviews & Awards
The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs is #35 on School Library Journal’s list “Top 100 Picture Books” of all time. In 2008, Scieszka was the first National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, a position created to bring awareness to the importance of reading at a young age. He is also the founder of “Guys Read,” a nonprofit literacy organization. His book The Stinky Cheese Man won a Caldecott Honor medal. Lane Smith was the illustrator for that book, and has worked with Scieszka on The Time Warp Trio novels. Smith has collaborated with many other authors and won countless awards for his work, including the recent Caldecott honor Grandpa Green.

Connections & Activities
The scope of activities for this book seem endless, because it’s so inviting for children. They can make up their own fractured fairy tales. They can discuss whether they believe the wolf or not, and explain their reasonings why. They can (and should!) read The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales, also by Scieszka and Smith, and discuss the fractured fairy tales told there. As an extended study, students can read more books by the author and illustrator separately, and compare and contrast their works.

Read it for yourself!
Scieszka, Jon. 1989. The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs. Ill. by Lane Smith. New York: Puffin
     Books. ISBN 9780140544510

Grandpa Green

Plot Summary
Grandpa Green tells the story of a man from birth to old age. It is told from the point of view of a young boy as he walks through his great-grandfather’s garden. More of the story is told through illustration than words, so it’s crucial to pay attention to every page, because there’s another layer to the story hidden there!

Critical Analysis
Lane Smith’s illustrations are absolutely breathtaking. Though the book has words, flipping through the pages feels as memorable as flipping through a photo album. Each page is packed with meaningful illustrations that go well beyond the scope of the words themselves. The illustrations look simple, because they consist of line drawings with very few colors, and the green areas are more heavily sponged. All of the colors are very muted; even the greens are strong rather than vibrant.
     This type of illustration works perfectly with the subject matter. The words are very matter-of-fact, telling the story with no adjectives or adverbs. Even the text is a dark green, as if Smith didn’t want the font to take away from the illustrations. This is a great choice because the illustrations tell so much more. They should be studied as long as possible before turning the page.

Personal Response
I wasn’t sure what to expect when I got this book. The cover looked almost monochromatic, so it didn’t really grab my attention. Also, I hate to say it, but sometimes I overlook award winners because I figure they must be stuffy if a panel liked them. (That opinion, I must say, has gone out the window after reading for this class!) I knew Lane Smith from his work with Jon Scieszka, but those projects were much sillier. In comparison, this book looked boring.
     Once I opened the book, I appreciated the contrast of the heavily painted topiaries next to the delicate line drawings. On my first reading, I read the text quickly, scanned the pictures, and finished thinking, “Huh, that’s it?” I read it several more times for class, loving it more each time. I spent several minutes on each page, and I think it’s crucial to do so because there are some little jokes hidden there, and it’s easier to understand the story. On the page about the world war, for example, it is incredibly important to take in the illustration piece by piece. As a whole, it looks beautiful, but once you look at every element, you appreciate it so much more. So then you go back to the first page to see it all again.
     It’s a good thing the illustrations are gorgeous, because this book seems very sad to me overall. The boy learning about his great-grandfather’s life reminded me of my own grandfather, who also fought in a world war and became very forgetful in old age due to Alzheimer’s. The fold-out pages near the end are bittersweet, with the final image giving closure to the story.

Reviews & Awards
Grandpa Green is a Caldecott Honor book, and once you see the illustrations, you’ll understand why! It was also one of Publishers Weekly’s Best Children’s Picture Books for 2011, and one of School Library Journal’s Best Picture Books of 2011.
     The New Yorker said it perfectly: ”The author’s illustrations, a blend of line drawings and sponge painting, have a classic feel, and make clever use of the topiary theme, rewarding close examination and repeated reading.”

Connections & Activities
- This book reminded me of The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein. I think it would be fun to have a program where both books are read, and listeners can compare and contrast them.
- Reading this book (or perhaps rereading it) can be made into a scavenger hunt. Children are given a list of items to find in the book and write down the page number where they find the picture. Items can range from some of Grandpa Green’s lost belongings to more general things cut into the topiaries.
- This book might inspire children to learn more about their grandparents’ or great-grandparents’ lives. They could conduct interviews to start a family history, and further that research at the library. Or, if they have no living grandparents, they can pick an aspect of the book to research, such as a world war.

Read it for yourself!
Smith, Lane. 2011. Grandpa Green. New York: Roaring Brook Press. ISBN 9781596436077

Sylvester and the Magic Pebble

Plot Summary
Sylvester is a young donkey who lives with his parents and spends his time collecting pebbles. He is exploring one rainy day when he finds a bright red, round, shiny pebble. As he looks it over, he wishes it would stop raining - and it does! Sylvester makes a few more trial wishes, and all come true while he is holding the pebble. He’s excited to show his parents and friends, but on the way home he encounters a hungry lion. Flustered, Sylvester doesn’t wish for the lion to disappear, but wishes he was a rock, and therefore safe from the lion. Because of the magic pebble, Sylvester indeed becomes a rock. And because he is a rock, he can no longer hold the pebble and make wishes. He stays a rock for a long time; his parents worry and question the townspeople, but no one has seen Sylvester. The young donkey remains a rock as the seasons change. His parents have never gotten over their son going missing, but one summer day, they decide to have a picnic. They find the perfect rock to sit on, and it just so happens to have a bright red pebble next to it! Will his parents wish Sylvester back into his regular form, or will he stay a rock forever?

Critical Analysis
The primary theme of Sylvester and the Magic Pebble is how children may wish for foolish things, and how that affects those around them. It is a beautifully written story, with anthropomorphized animals acting out the parts: Sylvester and his parents are donkeys; the police are pigs; neighbors are chickens, cats, and dogs. Most wear clothes and act like humans do - Sylvester’s mother wears a dress and knits, and his father wears a suit and smokes a pipe. The emotions on the animals’ faces are very expressive, and help add suspense and sadness to the story while Sylvester is missing.
     The illustrations look timeless, and have helped this book become a classic. The clean black lines make the vivid colors pop as Steig shows the change of seasons. Instead of the more traditional layout of pictures on the top part of the page and text at the bottom, Steig puts smaller pictures around the text on several pages. This helps the story flow through the illustrations, because they are not separate from the text and inspire the reader’s eyes to explore the page.

Personal Response
I had forgotten that all picture books weren’t silly! Sylvester and the Magic Pebble has an undertone of sadness, with Sylvester wishing himself home in his old body, and his parents missing him fiercely and searching for him incessantly. These emotions were expressively displayed in Steig’s illustrations of the characters, and really helped the sadness hit home. In fact, I think the illustrations were my favorite part. Nothing against the story, which was well-written and entertaining enough, but the illustrations are very vivid and colorful. They can’t tell the story by themselves (how would readers know the pebble is magic and that Sylvester turns himself into a rock?), but they really enhance the story, which wouldn’t be the same without them.

Reviews & Awards
Sylvester and the Magic Pebble won Caldecott Medal in 1970 due to Steig’s wonderful illustrations (mentioned above), and has been considered a classic since then. Interestingly, Steig’s portrayal of policemen as pigs has raised some controversy over the years, leading to the book being banned in certain parts of the United States! (For the record, pigs are shown on other pages as regular neighbors.) The book was reviewed in the Horn Book in 1969: “A remarkable atmosphere of childlike innocence pervades the book; beautiful pictures in full, natural color show daily and seasonal changes in the lush countryside and greatly extend the kindly humor and the warm, unself-conscious tenderness.”

Connections & Activities
William Steig’s other books include:
     Doctor De Soto ISBN 9780312611897
     The Amazing Bone ISBN 9780312564216
     Shrek! ISBN 9780312384494 (Yes, this is the book that inspired the movie!)
After reading the book, start a discussion about various aspects of the story. For example:
     - Sylvester likes to collect colored pebbles - what do you like to collect?
     - If you had a magic pebble, what would you wish for?

Read it for yourself!
Steig, William. 1969. Sylvester and the Magic Pebble. New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN
     9780671661540