Mo Willems Books

This is a fabulously funny, endearing book about Nanette who is entrusted, for the first time ever, to go out to a bakery shop and buy a warm wonderful smelling baguette for her mother. First shopping trips are a big responsibility, but Nanette quickly discovers that things can easily go awry.

Willems sets himself an increasingly hilarious task of finding new words to rhyme with ‘Nanette’ and ‘baguette’. As the story goes on, it becomes something that young readers really find funny as they realise how much fun he is having with the rhymes and how ridiculous they become.

The book is a visual delight as well. Willems constructed a French village scene by making 3D models out of cardboard boxes then imposed his cartoon style characters on top of the photographs digitally. This creates a wonderfully unique homemade effect that could easily inspire readers to create their own stories and scenes. As you’d expect from the author of the ‘Pigeon’ books and ‘Elephant and Piggie’, the story doesn’t exactly go as you’d expect and there are several funny twists to the tale that readers will enjoy.

My younger primary classes are particularly obsessed with his peculiar brand of humour and we have a huge amount of fun sharing them together.

Pigeon is a familiar character to be reckoned with, as fans of Mo Willems will know. So, if Pigeon doesn’t want to go to school, then it’s not going to be easy to persuade anyone otherwise.

As the book progresses, Pigeon articulates every possible objection to the idea of school and, being Pigeon, comes up with an alternative: a place to practise all the things those worrying skills, with experts to help and other birds to work and play with. Hold on! Isn’t that what a school is…?

In his trademark way, Mo Willems engages the reader with a masterful combination of pictures and text, making them a part of the story as Pigeon’s imaginary interlocutor. He captures precisely the tone of a small child arguing against adults with all the cunning they can muster. Pigeon’s questions and worries are a neat mixture of the classic (What if I don’t like it?) and the more absurd (What if I get finger paint in my feathers?). The gentle humour is enhanced by graphic drawings which use Pigeon’s facial expressions and changes in scale to chart her fluctuating feelings. When she admits to being scared, she’s just one small figure in the middle of the page; when she finally gets the school bus, she’s more than tripled in size.

The combination of warmth and comedy makes this a perfect story to reassure children concerned about starting school – whether before they go or once they arrive. Don’t limit it to this though; its vibrant sense of fun will be widely enjoyed by children of all ages and adults alike.