Elephant and Piggie return in two more adventures that will deliver guffaws to even the most beginning reader. As in Today I Will Fly and My Friend Is Sad (March 2007), the text appears exclusively in speech balloons, the dialogue perfectly complemented and enhanced by clear cartoon illustrations that show a master of body language and pacing at the top of his game. In I Am Invited to a Party! Piggie, a novice at parties, asks Gerald the Elephant for advice: “I know parties,” he says sagely. The two celebrate the invitation and prepare in ever more absurd fashion—it may be a “fancy pool costume party,” after all, and “WE MUST BE READY!” The end defies all prediction in a goodhearted, highly satisfying twist that will have readers giggling with delight. In There Is a Bird on Your Head! (ISBN: 978-1-4231-0686-9), Piggie provides narration to an ever-more-frantic Gerald as two birds alight, nest and hatch their brood on his head. Both are perfectly pitched to their audience, who are too often given the dreariest of stuff to cut their reading teeth on. This silliness is sublime. (Early reader. 4-8)
