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| Mo Willems |
Knuffle Bunny is the winner of Caldecott Honors, was a National Parenting Publications Gold Medalist, and the BCCB Blue Ribbon Picture Book Award winner.
-Rating: 5 out of 5 Stars *****-Summary: Trixie and her father go on a trip to the Laundromat in New York City only to leave behind precious Knuffle Bunny. Trixie struggles to communicate that her favorite stuffed animal is lost at the Laundromat while the family frantically searches for him.
Both readers and parents are able to identify with Knuffle Bunny. As Trixie is too young to talk and use verbal language, she struggles to communicate with parents as parents struggle to understand what their child needs. Children can also relate to helping parents do chores such as laundry and wanting to help their parents in any way they can. Children also know what it is like to attached to a certain someone or something and how devastating it can be when they are left behind. It is fun for the whole family or classroom. The story incorporates a lot of humor through both text and illustrations. The text uses word bubbles to show dialogue as well as written dialogue and text. Willems uses everyday language and also babble to express Trixie’s words since she does not know any words. When reading baby babble, you cannot help but laugh! The illustrations are really what make the story though, since there is very limited overall text to the story. The illustrations are a mixture of real black and white photographs and cartoon drawings. All the characters and word bubbles are cartoons while the setting and backgrounds are real pictures of New York City. It is a mixture of reality and cartoon world that is very unique and intriguing for a children’s book. The facial expressions of the characters really allow the reading to know how the characters are feeling and the progression of the story without reading the text surround them. This book would be great for both readers and non-readers. The illustrations alone tell the story of Knuffle Bunny. The text is also repetitive and short enough for beginning readers to understand and still allow themselves to understand the plot of the story. Books with repetition and similar constructed sentences are great for new readers to give them a sense of predictability and comfort.
This is a great book for a classroom. Aside from how it can benefit beginning readers and the humor it brings into the room, it can be used for academic purposes too. Trixie cannot use words that people can understand yet so she needed to use other ways of communication. As a class, student and teachers can talk about different ways of communication and how to use them. The discussion can expand into using and practicing different methods of communication and talking about what makes them beneficial or hard. It can put into perspective that not everyone can use verbal language and give students an opportunity understand of how those people feel and know that not everything can be communicated with language.
Mo Willems has also illustrated many other award-winning picture books for young readers. See more Knuffle Bunny books and many others at: http://www.mowillems.com/
This looks like such a fun and interesting book! I liked your classroom idea of having students think about different ways of communication and how they can be useful or be hard to use. I think the illustrations in this book are also really cool and I would definitly want to use this book with my child study student!
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