Elephants Cannot Dance!
Pigs Make Me Sneeze!
Mo Willems
Walker Books

Time after time, Mo Willems does it with these hugely funny episodes in the lives of best friends Gerald and Piggie, delivered entirely in hilarious dialogue and through the priceless drawings.

In Elephants Cannot Dance! Piggie announces that she’s teaching all her friends to dance and that includes Gerald. However despite, so he says, that he’d love to learn to dance, Gerald knows that it’s impossible; moreover he has proof. It says so in ‘What Elephants Can Do’ – on page eleven to be precise, which just happens to be the same page number as that particular bit of dialogue. Piggie isn’t having any of that, responding by telling Piggie that the book does NOT say he cannot try so to do. And try is what Gerald does, but his timing and coordination leave a lot to be desired 

as he appears to be doing the opposite of what Piggie instructs. 

Eventually a frustrated Gerald decides he’s had enough; point proved ‘elephants just cannot dance’. Maybe they can teach though …

Good on Piggie who never gives up trying to teach Gerald to dance.

What they both do effortlessly is put across the crucial ‘reading is fun’ message to children learning to read.

Pigs Make Me Sneeze! thinks pachyderm Gerald who just cannot stop sneezing and does so all over Piggie. That is a nuisance just when the two were about to play together, but much worse is the possibility that, so Gerald thinks, he is allergic to pigs and we all know what that means: he can’t go near his bestie.

Off goes Gerald to consult Dr Cat. However during the examination it becomes evident that the pachyderm isn’t suffering from an allergy. His diagnosis is one that demonstrates how best friends share everything and it makes Gerald feel a whole lot better; let’s hope Piggie soon feels better too. 

The expressions on the faces of Gerald and Piggie in this are just wonderful. With its subtle message about not jumping to hasty conclusions, this will delight learner readers and those who listen to the stories.