I Will Surprise My Friend!-An Elephant and Piggie Book [2008, PDF/EPUB, ENG]

by Mo Willems

(1,315 ratings)
Book cover
Gerald is careful. Piggie is not.
Piggie cannot help smiling. Gerald can.
Gerald worries so that Piggie does not have to.

Gerald and Piggie are best friends.
In
I Will Surprise My Friend!, Gerald and Piggie want to play a game and surprise each other—but the biggest surprise is the one they least expect.
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Book details


  • Author : Mo Willems
  • Publisher : Hyperion Books for Children; Illustrated edition
  • Published : 06-02-2008
  • Language : English
  • Pages : 64
  • ISBN-10 : 9781423109624
  • ISBN-13 : 978-1423109624
  • Reader Reviews : 1,315 (4.9)

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  • File Formats : PDF, FB2, DOC, EPUB, TXT
  • Status : available for FREE download
  • Downloads : 3548

About the Author


Mo Willems


Mo Willems (born February 11, 1968) is an American writer, animator, and creator of children's books.

Bio from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

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Reader Reviews

J
Melissa
Great series for kids!
Reviewed in the United States on 06-24-2022
My granddaughter loves this series. Mo Willems is a great children's author. I learned of him on Jimmy Fallon's Tonight Show, but the grandkids already had a Piggy toy..
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J
Ulyyf
I will read this book!
Reviewed in the United States on 05-16-2010
Early readers can be such a pain. They have to be easy to read, so they include a lot of very short, repetitititive sentences. I bet you can quote Dick and Jane here: See Spot. See Spot run. Run, Spot, run! Run, run, run! Short, easy to read, lots of practice with those three words... and boring as HECK. Who wants to read that more than once?

Or they do the same thing, but with rhyming: See the cat. The cat is fat. The fat cat sat. Sat on the mat. The fat cat sat on the mat. See the rat!

Ye gods. Now your kid will always be able to read -at words, but they'll read them all in a dreadful monotone, ill-suited for anything other than the phone book. Gotta indoctrinate them young to think reading is dull and boring!

Well, there is hope. Elephant and Piggie! This series does everything right.

First of all, the text is all dialog. Exciting, funny dialog with LOTS AND LOTS OF EXCLAMATION POINTS!!!! Ever see a first grader write? EVERY! SENTENCE! NEEDS! AN! EXCLAMATION! POINT!!!! YES IT DOES! You can't help but ham it up when you read, no matter HOW much you hate reading.

And when there is repetition - as there needs to be, to help children practice - it's natural. Piggie will say something, and then Elephant will repeat it in a disbelieving way. Or Elephant will say something and Piggie will repeat it to agree with him. (Doesn't happen much in this one.)

Secondly, the pictures are active and engaging and funny and dramatic. Not much distracting detail, either. But while the pictures are so active and engaging and funny and dramatic, they provide a LITTLE bit of help to the shaky reader... but not so much that they think they can look at the picture and not bother with those troublesome words.

Thirdly, the books are just interesting. When you're learning something now, you have to do it more than once. It's good for kids to re-read the same books over and over again... and I'm sure it saves the teacher money on stocking her classroom shelves! But what child, honestly, wants to read a beginning reader again? It's boring! They read it once, are you happy? Now they want to get to the good stuff!

I promise you, kids will want to read these books over and over again. I don't know through educational experience, no... but I know through watching my own two nieces. I know through looking at adults eagerly picking up these books to read. Adults! There's just something about them.

My favorite part of this book? Has to be comparing Gerald's visions of what might have happened to Piggie (gotten lost and fallen off a cliff, gotten snatched by a huge bird, gotten eaten by a monster) with Piggie's visions of what might have happened to Gerald (gone to eat lunch).
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J
Lynn Broadhead
Very engaging and a great teaching tool
Reviewed in the United States on 03-30-2021
Love this series. My granddaughters have giggled through these books and we’ve discussed what the characters learned. Tjey practice making the expressions of the characters and relating to what they are feeling. They each read different character parts now, but even before the youngest read, she would wait for the one bit part she had memorized with enthusiasm. Very engaging, and great teaching tool..
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