{"id":155,"date":"2008-07-07T22:31:35","date_gmt":"2008-07-08T02:31:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/2008\/07\/07\/review-of-i-will-surprise-my-friend-by-mo-willems-2\/"},"modified":"2008-10-13T22:54:51","modified_gmt":"2008-10-14T02:54:51","slug":"review-of-i-will-surprise-my-friend-by-mo-willems-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/?p=155","title":{"rendered":"Review of I Will Surprise My Friend! by Mo Willems"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em><img decoding=\"async\" id=\"image235\" height=\"239\" alt=\"i_will_surprise_my_friend.jpg\" src=\"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/10\/i_will_surprise_my_friend.jpg\" \/><\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>I Will Surprise My Friend!<\/em><\/p>\n<p>by Mo Willems<\/p>\n<p>Hyperion Books for Children, New York, 2008.\u00a0 57 pages.<\/p>\n<p>Oh, I do love Mo Willems&#8217; books!\u00a0 <em>I Will Surprise My Friend! <\/em>is another easy reader about two friends, Elephant (named Gerald) and Piggie.\u00a0 As with the Pigeon books, Mo Willems manages to convey all kinds of emotions with simple line drawings.\u00a0 Adding a raised eyebrow here and a pointed toe there tell the readers exactly what the characters are feeling.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;d like to try this book in a storytime, but it&#8217;s particularly suited for a child learning to read.\u00a0 There are a few words on each page, and the pictures will give the child delight at deciphering exactly what is happening, and they will find it tremendous fun.<\/p>\n<p>To start out, Gerald and Piggie see a squirrel hide behind a rock and surprise his friend.\u00a0 The two squirrels are delighted.\u00a0 This gives\u00a0Gerald a great idea &#8212; they can surprise each other at the big rock.<\/p>\n<p>Gerald\u00a0and Piggie are both fully engaged in the fun of the planned surprise.\u00a0 But when two people are both hiding, who&#8217;s around to get surprised?\u00a0 There&#8217;s plenty of visual humor in this story, and of course the fun of seeing behind the scenes when both friends get surprised in a way they didn&#8217;t expect.<\/p>\n<p>Hmm.\u00a0 Describing it takes more words than are in the book!\u00a0 I want to find a beginning reader to read this story to me.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/ASIN\/01423109627\/sonderbooksco-20\" target=\"outside\">Buy from Amazon.com<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Find this review on the main site at:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.sonderbooks.com\/Picture_Books\/i_will_surprise_my_friend.html\">www.sonderbooks.com\/Picture_Books\/i_will_surprise_my_friend.html<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I Will Surprise My Friend! by Mo Willems Hyperion Books for Children, New York, 2008.\u00a0 57 pages. Oh, I do love Mo Willems&#8217; books!\u00a0 I Will Surprise My Friend! is another easy reader about two friends, Elephant (named Gerald) and Piggie.\u00a0 As with the Pigeon books, Mo Willems manages to convey all kinds of emotions [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45,14,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-155","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-animal-characters","category-delightfully-silly","category-picture-book-review"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=155"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=155"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=155"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=155"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}