Elephant and Piggie's We Are in a Play!

[kate_nepveu]

And now for a completely different entertainment review: a musical adaptation of a bunch of Mo Willems' Elephant and Piggie books, titled We Are in a Play!

Elephant and Piggie, if you're not familiar, are early reader books (i.e., extremely limited vocabulary and low-density text) about the two best friends of the title. They are to be treasured, because they are adorably fun for adults as well as children—SteelyKid can rattle through them with ease, now, but the Pip also loves them to pieces, and they're wonderful for dramatic readings. (I went to our local used bookstore, hoping to get a stack of them, and couldn't find a single one of any of Willems' books. The library has an entire shelf of Elephant & Piggie that sometimes goes down as low as a couple of books.)

This was about an hour long and transitioned between, uh, at least seven of the books. [*] The Pip got a bit restless by the end, especially as the adaptation of We Are in a Book! to ...Play! involved audience participation, which he was not having any of (that's my kid), but on the whole it went down well with them. I liked it too, except the song they made of I Am Going!, because having Gerald (the elephant) not only sing at Piggie about how he doesn't want her to go but physically stop her is weird and creepy and yuck.

[*] I Am Invited to a Party!; Elephants Cannot Dance!; Listen to My Trumpet!; I Love My New Toy!; I Am Going!; Should I Share My Ice Cream?; We Are in a Book!. I am not entirely sure of the order of these.

With that caveat, recommended. And seriously, Willems is a treasure, you can't go wrong with E&P, or the Pigeon, or the Knuffle Bunny trilogy.

Comments

[cyphomandra]

Ooh, thanks for this, as it contained the vital and new-to-me information that there was a third Knuffle Bunny book! I actually just acquired and read the first one to my two a fortnight ago. I knew there was a second (mainly because I have a copy somewhere I bought some years back as a gift for a friend's kid and then misplaced while moving for long enough to make it less appropriate) but didn't know about the third.

[kate_nepveu]

Yes! It may make the adults reading it sniffly, though the kids don't seem to have the same reaction.

[conuly]

There's also a new Pigeon book, about bathtime.

[kate_nepveu]

Which I expect will be coming home with Chad & the kids after their usual Sunday trip to the bookstore. =>