I Broke My Trunk!

An Elephant and Piggie Book

Willems, M. ( 2011). I Broke My Trunk! New York, NY: Hyperion Books for Children.

This Elephant and Piggie book by Mo Willems is full of humor and emotion.  Gerald, the elephant,  breaks his trunk and is telling Piggie all about how it happened.   Gerald tells how he lifted Hippo on his trunk, then Rhino, and then Hippo's sister and a piano.  His story is long, and Piggie is impatient. Piggie asks if that how he breaks his trunk, but Gerald has more to his story.  Gerald tells that it was running to tell his best friend, Piggie, that he broke his trunk by tripping and falling.  When Piggie wants to go to tell others about the story, he does the very same thing and breaks his snout.

Mo Willems is able to show emotions to his characters through his simple cartoon-like drawings.  The emotions are shown through small gestures, character's facial expressions, and small cartoon lines around characters to show emotion.  He also shows emotion though text such as all capitalized words, italicized words, and the use of punctuation.  This is a great series for early readers.  They will enjoy reading the silly adventures these two best friends do together.