Customer Reviews

There Is a Bird On Your Head! (An Elephant and Piggie Book)

5 star:		(40)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

My little boy reads everything with words on it... except, ofcourse, for books. He usually yells at me when I have the audacity to suggest we sit down and cuddle and read but this book was different.

It was my first time reading anything by Mo Willems so I had no preconceived notions. What I found was very funny text on clean, simply illustrated pages without too many words on each page. YES!

My six-year-old son has been reading (self taught) since he was four, but normally there is too much stuff going on in books with lots of detailed, color spread pages. This title had the perfect balance of white space without too many words and an enjoyable story that didn't talk down to a child who favors this style of book.

I have never had him sit there and read through a whole book for me. He read this entire book and would have read it again. It felt like a miracle.

Perhaps it was.

Mo Willems, you have my heart. Sam and I will read more of your books!

There Is a Bird On Your Head! is my son's favorite of the Elephant and Piggie books! This whole series is great fun... my son loves the expressions on the faces of both characters. And, more importantly, HE wants to do the reading at bedtime because he has fun trying to match his reading to the expressions from the faces. And, we love looking for Pigeon on the back covers! I wish there were more of these books!

My first grader (who's been struggling with reading in general and lacking motivation) just read this book aloud to me and her little brother at bedtime and they were both laughing hysterically at the end. We'd taken the 4 books in this series out of the library, and when I suggested it was time for bed she literally begged me to read the other 3 RIGHT NOW, which we did.
Few things make a parent prouder than hearing your child learn to read, except maybe when they finally get excited about it!
We are all now Mo Willems fans!

I bought this book based on the reviews of others. My daughter is 1½ and since we live abroad, I am trying to encourage her English skills and the book sounded funny.

She loves this book and can now count to three and say "hatching", although I am not quite sure how handy THAT word comes in...:-)
The book is always read at least three times and I enjoy it as much as she does - I can highly recommend this book.

My son (who just turned 4) -discovered Mo Willems books a few years ago - his first was "Don't Let The Pigeon Drive The Bus" which illicted belly laughs for MONTHS. We moved on to the other pigeon books which were well-loved also. Now that my son is 4 and recognizing letters and a few word books, we got the Elephant and Piggie books - he loves them and laughs heartily with each reading. The illustrations are hilarious - the elephant's facial expression crack my boy up. Also, the simple text is great for him to practice letters and reading easy words but he doesn't get bored with it. As a bonus, we live in Brooklyn and went to a signing - Mo signed this book for my son and it is one of his prized possessions.

I happen to be waiting for exrays for my elderly mother and I happened to pick up this book and decided to make time pass quickly,so I began to read aloud to my mother (84yrs. old). Well, we both laughed wholeheartedly with each turn of the page. Even bystanders enjoyed it. So young or old, Mo touches the child in all of us.The humor was simple and well illustrated.I wish I had grandchildren to read to but I am sure going to get the entire collection, just in case, and in the meantime I will read to my favorite audience, Mom. Thanks for the moment!

My daughter loves this book! Never fails to get lots of belly laughs. The text in the thought bubbles is really secondary to the telling of the story that goes on via the drawings of Elephant and Piggie. This has been a bedtime favorite for some time and still has not gotten old - highly recommended!

Mo Willems is a genius. These books work like a classic Warner Brothers cartoon; working on two levels simultaneously. There's simple sight-gag humor for the kids; and sly, subtle humor for the grownups. The sparse but extremely expressive artwork is a joy to behold and study. My 4 year old daughter encounterd this book in a library while on vacation this summer. We all find the book and all the others in the series to be excruciatingly funny! We read the books aloud; I play Gerald, and my daughter plays Piggie. (I also do any other minor characters) We read the dialogue in a huge, over-the-top, melodramatic fashion, doing our best Mel Blanc/Daws Butler impressions, and act out the physical bits where we can... She just dissolves into fits of hysterical laughter... We have all of the Piggie books now, and several of the "Pigeon" series too. I cannot recommend the works of Mo Willems highly enough!

Easy Readers are kinda a pain to deal with. You want to hold your kid's attention naturally (they won't want to read a boring book, and who can blame them?) while teaching them something, and you want them to want to read the book again. Reading a book more than once increases their understanding. (Plus, you probably don't have enough cash to buy enough books for your kid to read them each one time only.)

This is a tough sell. Kids don't want to read "books" that are nothing but thinly done excuses for teaching "-at" words, or practicing their first Dolch list. They want to read literature! Not baby books! And you're holding them back! (And then they open up literature and get frustrated. You just can't win.)

Well, forget all that. Elephant and Piggie is your solution.

These books are definitely easy. They have few words, and a lot of repetition of the words they have. (They're told in (very funny) dialog, and for humor one character often repeats another's sentence verbatim. "There is a bird on your head." "There is a bird on my head???")

But they're also FUNNY. I'm a grown-up, I see these jokes telegraphed a mile away, and I still crack up reading them.

And the illustrations! Just enough to help the cautious reader... but not so detailed that the reader can depend entirely on them to tell the story. No, you have to read the words.

These books are wildly funny, and they're educational. Your kid will read them to tatters. What more can you ask?

My favorite part of this book has to be Piggie's tears when the eggs hatch. Awww.

UPDATE: After reading this to my now 4.5 yr old, she loves it more now that she is older and can appreciate the humor. She giggles and giggles and you can just see her sense of humor developing (she describes to me in detail WHY it's funny)...I think this is exactly what the author has in mind, and he delivers. When first introduced to my daughter, she may have just been too young to fully appreciate the nuances of the facial expressions, and how silence can be funny.

Original review follows:

4 stars because the book is great, and I feel that a big part of Willems' strength is not only encouraging humor in children, but actually teaching them humor, and that it can be subtle.

I only removed a star because sometimes I feel he is gunning for a laugh out of the parents more than the children reading it. Otoh I like the fact that I have to explain the "adult" humor to my 4 yr old as this is part of the teaching process I mentioned.

Great author, great book. I also recommend "My Friend Is Sad" and the one about the costume party, both by Willems.