Beginning Reader Book Review: I Am Going!

I Am Going!
Written and illustrated by:  Mo Willems
Published by: Hyperion, 2010
64 pages
Ages 4+

from goodreads.com:
Gerald is careful. Piggie is not. Piggie cannot help smiling. Gerald can.

Gerald and Piggie are best friends.

In "I Am Going ," Piggie ruins a perfectly good day by telling Gerald she is going. If Piggie goes, who will Gerald skip with, play Ping-Pong with, and wear silly hats with?

Willems's Geisel Award-winning duo continues to delight readers with their silly shenanigans. Packed full of humor and heart, the Elephant & Piggie Books are vetted by an early-learning specialist and early learners themselves, so they'll be right on target for new readers.
   
* My four year old son has really taken off with his reading skills.  He's always asking me, "Does that say____?"  when he sees a sign when we're out running errands.  90% of the time he's read the words correctly!  Now that he's attending preschool every day I've stopped doing our daily schoolwork.  Even though he's only at school for 2 1/2 hours I don't want to overwhelm him too much with the academics.  I know he's already well prepared for Kindergarten.  However, I've started having him read books to me during the day to keep his reading skills up.  This was our first book that we read together.  Currently there are 18 books in the series by Mo Willems.  They don't have to be read in any order though!  This was not the first Elephant and Piggie book that we have read.  I have previously reviewed Today I Will Fly.  This was the first time that my son was reading one of these books though.  The text is repetitive and simple enough that he could read this with some assistance (words like yesterday he needed help). The speech bubbles are color-coded (gray for Gerald, pink for Piggie) so you know who is speaking.  After my son read each page, I would repeat it, reading with the correct expression.  In this book, expression does help with the understanding and humor of the story!  My son did a great job and enjoyed it a lot.  At bedtime he chose this book to read to his older sister. It was very cute listening to him read with the expression that I had read with earlier in the day.  We're off to the library today to get another Elephant and Piggie book!   

Family Rating: 2 thumbs up!