Big Bargain! Elephant and Piggie BIGGIE! (Give Me 5 !) by Mo Willems

This book is a colossal bargain--five of Mo Willems' best-selling, award-winning beginning reader books about that unusual pair of buddies, Elephant and Piggie.

Author-illustrator Mo Willems, Caldecott winner for his blockbuster toddler tale, Knuffle Bunny: A Cautionary Tale, earned laughs and not a few tears in the eye from preschoolers and parents, and his sequels (see reviews here) were both hilarious and touching, a real watershed in books for the very young in both literary and artistic style.

But toddlers grow up, just like Trixie, Knuffle Bunny's owner, and academic achievement looms in their futures, and Mo Willems did not desert his fans. Following in the way of Theodor Seuss Geisel, author-artist Willems took on the challenge of making beginning reading books everything a book should be--with fully-developed divergent characters in one of the epic friendships of children's literature.

Now Willems' An Elephant And Piggie Biggie! (An Elephant and Piggie Book) (Hyperion, 2017) is a collection of five of his Elephant and Piggie stories, reproduced in full-size pages right from the originals, five books for the price of one! Elephant Gerald is a bit shy, somewhat reserved and inclined to follow the straight and narrow, while his best friend Piggie is an exuberant, enthusiastic, and extroverted adventurer with big ideas that sometimes require the assistance and/or rescue of her friend Gerald. Willems' series is what beginner readers should be, funny, surprising, insightful,  and done in expressive illustrations that extend the text with visual cues to help out emergent readers navigate the vocabulary, while giving up none of the elements that make any story absorbing.

This series has the virtue of starting out as a quick read-aloud and going on to become favorite read-alone fodder, making for good solo bedtime reading and perfect for vacation and car-trip reading, and parents will appreciate this one as the perfect birthday present. (Read reviews here.)

Included in this collection are the stories Today I Will Fly! (An Elephant and Piggie Book), Watch Me Throw the Ball! (Elephant and Piggie), Can I Play Too? (An Elephant and Piggie Book), Let's Go for a Drive! (An Elephant and Piggie Book), and Piggie's culinary classic, I Really Like Slop! (An Elephant and Piggie Book).