Passing the Baton! Harold and Hog Pretend for Real by Dan Santat and Mo Willems

"LOOK!"

"WHAT AT?"

"I FOUND A BOOK ABOUT ELEPHANT AND PIGGIE!"

"THOSE ARE TWO OF OUR FAVORITES!"

"LET'S READ IT TOGETHER!

Harold and Hog are great admirers of Mo Willems' Elephant and Piggie books and they think they have found one! And inside the book, there are their role models--Gerald the Elephant and Piggie, inviting them inside.

Gerald gives Harold some glasses, just like his, and Piggie gives Hog a cuter, pinker, piggier nose, and the two amateurs are ready to do impersonations of their heroes.

BOOP! BOOP!

"LOOK!" SAYS HAROLD."I AM GERALD!"

"SEE, HAROLD!" SAYS HOG. "I AM PIGGIE!"

But subbing for Elephant and Piggie does NOT come easy. It takes more than a bit of costuming to get inside those iconic characters.

Hog finds Piggie's devil-may-care attitude hard to assume. Smiling and dancing... and flying? Eeek!

"THAT SOUNDS SCARY!" SAYS HOG.

Harold finds that he has far too much sang-froid to act timid like Gerald.

The two would-be impersonators look at each other. Are they failures at playing Gerald and Piggie? Then Harold has a happier thought. Maybe they do have the right stuff for their roles after all.

"THEY ARE BEST FRIENDS LIKE US!"

And here comes Pigeon!

"HI, PIGEON. WOULD YOU LIKE TO DRIVE THE BUS?" ASKS HOG.

And in the new partnership of Mo Willems and the noted author-illustrator Dan Santat, Harold and Hogi are metafictionally launched into Elephant and Piggie, THE SEQUEL, in the new Elephant and Piggie Like Reading! Harold and Hog Pretend For Real! series (Disney Hyperion, 2019). It's quite a tour-de-force for the two power author-illustrators to audition new characters to take over the franchise, especially when the personalities of Harold and Hog and Gerald and Piggie are switched, with Hog being the play-it-safe character and Harold the Elephant being the daring, flight-of-fancy leader, but with Santat's artistic skill in characterization, Hog and Harold make quite a talented pair of comic best buddies, too. Says Kirkus Reviews, "A hoot for readers who already know Elephant and Piggie... with the frame story contributed by Mo Willems, Santat creates yet another early reader that is at once playful, self-aware, and perceptive in its exploration of the differences of personalities and the complications (or simplicities) of friendship."