Pre-Trip Prep? Let's Go for a Drive! by Mo Willems



”DRIVE! DRIVE!

DRIVEY-DRIVE-DRIVE!”

Gerald the Elephant has a great idea and the effervescent Piggie is on board instantly. Going for a drive sounds like a capital idea for the two best friends. Piggie, always happily impetuous, is ready to leave right away, but Gerald, the perennial nervous Nellie, starts worrying.

“FIRST WE NEED A MAP!:

But Piggie is already on it!

”I HAVE A MAP!

All set? Well, no. Gerald worries that it may be really sunny. And Piggie has the answer–sunglasses–and they are soon too cool for school in their shades.

But what if it’s NOT (sunny, that is)? What if it rains?

Piggie fetches umbrellas for two and they are ready for a duet of “cruising in the rain.”

Got the gear and rarin’ to go? Load up? All aboard?

Then Gerald the Elephant gets a truly worrying thought. Before they can load the car, the two need one more thing... the car!

Anxiously, he asks Piggie if she can furnish that.

I AM A PIG!

A PIG WITH A CAR WOULD BE SILLY!”

As usual, Gerald drops into an instant depression, but as always, Piggie improvises a solution that makes good use of all that gear, sunglasses and all, and the two set sail for an alternative adventure. Avast and ARRRRRGH!

Mo Willems seems to have an endless reservoir of creativity in another tour de force of an emergent reader book, using minimal but highly selective word choices and maximum cartooning skill with each single line of the drawings telling its own tale. His newest, Let's Go for a Drive! (An Elephant and Piggie Book) (Hyperion, 2012), is another little laugh-out-loud masterpiece of picture-book art. As Kirkus Reviews adds, "The pair's refrain incorporates each new element to Gerald's plan in a way that is both classically childlike and slyly pedagogical."