Where There's a Will(ems)....: Can I Play, Too? by Mo Willems

Gerald the elephant and his sidekick Piggie are all set to play catch, until they get a puzzling request from a passerby:

"EXCUSE ME," SAYS A LITTLE GREEN SNAKE. "CAN I PLAY TOO?"

Piggie and Gerald are consternated, exchanging bewildered looks.

Snake is hurt at their hesitancy.

"YOU DON'T WANT TO PLAY WITH ME?"

The two friends are even more bemused. Finally, Piggie patiently explains that they are just about to play catch, and for that you need, well ... ARMS!

No ARMS?" snake replies in mock dismay.

"HEE HEE! HA HA! HEE HEE! HA HA!

I'M A SNAKE! I KNOW I DON'T HAVE ARMS!"

"YOU ARE A FUNNY SNAKE," SAYS PIGGIE.

Gerald and Piggie relax, happy that they are not guilty of being politically incorrect by mentioning a delicate subject, and Snake insists that he get a try-out for the catch team. But all of the experiments--with one ball, with Piggie and Gerald each pitching, and with all the balls they can come up with simultaneously--end with Snake getting bonked on the head. Snake hangs his head, realizing that he really can't play this game their way.

But then Piggie, true to the ideal of friendship, comes through with an alternative plan.

"WE WILL ALL PLAY CATCH!" SHE DECLARES.

And she is right. Gerald pitches Snake and Piggie catches him. Everyone plays and Snake has... a ball!

The multiple-award winning Mo Willems proves once more that his well of sly and wry sophisticated wit hasn't run dry in this recent addition to his lauded early reader series Elephant and Piggie with Can I Play Too? (An Elephant and Piggie Book) (Hyperion, 2010). What can you say about these books that hasn't already been said? The text is so accessible and yet so meaningful, and the illustrations, simple-lined cartoons in a primary palette, are so subtly expressive of human emotion that even adults find them subtly humorous. No emergent reader should miss this newest Elephant and Piggie easy reader.