Sunday, October 30, 2011

Serious about Mo Willems


My students are obsessed with Mo Willems and his books, most especially Piggie and Elephant, the Pigeon, and everyone in the Knuffle Bunny books. In fact, my students love the Knuffle Bunny books so much that they have written, as a class, a new one. I will be sharing it in the next day or so when we can record it.

Thanks to our amazing librarian, I have a number of pictures from Mo Willems' books. When the books have been so loved that they are falling apart, she removes them from the library and replaces them with new copies. She has given some to me to cut up. I am using them around my room as encouragement to my students.

Their response has been, not surprisingly, positive. My favorite reaction, however, was to the pigeon. As they always look for him in any other book by Willems they were thrilled to find him in our classroom. Many said something along the lines of, "That sneaky Pigeon snuck into our classroom!"

Now the question will be whether or not I can manage to update what these little friends are saying regularly. I think they will lose their power if I don't change their speech bubbles pretty often.

3 comments:

Ann said...

I am currently working in a second grade classroom, and just read Knuffle Bunny Too for the first time. Hilarious! I love that you posted about this author, I've been learning a lot about him. What a great idea putting up images of his characters around the room. I assume you have visited his page, but just in case you haven't take a look: http://www.pigeonpresents.com/. Believe me, the kids love it!

Sneaker Teacher said...

I love Mo Willems and so do my kiddos. Last year, I didn't really introduce his books until later in the year and they were obsessed for quite some time. This year I bought the Pigeon books from the Scholastic Book Club and they are enjoying those, but I haven't shown the Knuffle Bunny yet. I have to borrow them from the library soon!

Jenny said...

Ann, I love his website. It has been a favorite of previous classes (I haven't shared it with this group yet).

Sneaker Teacher, Our librarian is having to dedicate a special shelf just to Mo's books because of the school-wide love for them. Of course, the books rarely make it onto the shelf because kids grab them off the carts to check them out before they can get shelved again.