Waiting Is Not Easy! (An Elephant & Piggie Book) by Mo Willems

Image

Figure 1. Waiting Is Not Easy! book cover (2019).

Evaluation of Book

Mo Willems’ Waiting Is Not Easy! tells the story of Piggie wanting to surprise Gerald, the elephant. The only issue, they need to wait for it to arrive. Gerald does not take this well, and Piggie must help keep him calm until the surprise arrives. And it is all worth it.

The Elephant and Piggie series use bubbled dialogue for all of the text. The words tell the entire story while the sensationalism of each word allows the feelings and volume level to be expressed. For this story, Gerald must practice patience, though his sensationalized text let the reader know that he sometimes can not control himself. However, Piggie’s dialogue, or lack thereof, allows Gerald to vent until the surprise arrives.

Mo Willems does a splendid job at incorporating illustrations to show the feelings of Piggie and Gerald along with telling parts of the story. First, the facial expressions and body language reinforce the sensationalized dialogue. When large font lets the reader know Elephant yelled something, the picture also shows a distressed elephant yelling so loud that his tonsils show. For these pages, Piggie also expresses himself by being knocked over by Gerald’s words, looking shocked and a bit hurt. Also, Piggie mostly does not speak during this book. The pictures show him in a yoga pose, trying to stay clam and wait for the surprise despite Gerald flipping out over needing to wait. Therefore, the bulk of the story and how the characters feel shows up in the pictures drawn. Brilliant!

The illustrations also do a phenomenal job of foreshadowing and extending the plot. It begins around the middle of the book when the page colors begin to change, taking on the hues of dusk, then dark, followed by a brilliant night sky with a bazillion stars. The color changes are foreshadowing the surprise for Gerald. And then the starlit sky, with no words attached, extend the plot because it shows Piggie’s surprise. And because the surprise does not appear in words, the pictures explain the big finally for the story.

Response

All of us can relate to the concept of waiting, so perfectly explained in Waiting Is Not Easy! As a child, my parents taught me how to wait. And now I am helping my son learn this same practice, and it does take practice. And I agree that everyone needs to learn to have patience. And I also think that having calm people, like Piggie, around make it more manageable. Therefore, I will take a page from this book and work on staying clam while teaching my son how to have patience. And because I learned from this text that I agree with, my goal is to read all of the Elephant and Piggie books to my son so we can learn even more together.

Conclusion

Mo Willems’ Waiting Is Not Easy! is the ideal book for beginner and advanced readers. Beginners can practice with the book and master the words while advanced readers can use the book to read to others, practicing their inflection and stage voice for different feelings. Out of four stars, I give this book four.

Citation

Willems, M. (2014). Waiting is not easy! (an Elephant & Piggie book). New York, NY: Hyperion Books for Children.

Willis, C. (2019). Waiting is not easy! (an Elephant & Piggie book) book cover (photo). Retrieved March 15, 2019 from https://drive.google.com/file/d/1lJVk6AezUBJdpyKPJLRRIvxYUIvsq9dO/view?usp=sharing