CRR 4

Knuffle Bunny

By: Mo Willems

Knuffle Bunny is about this little girl named Trixie, her father, and her bunny. One Day, before Trixie could talk, she and her dad head out of the house to do some errands. They end up going to the Laundromat. Trixie then “helps” her dad put the laundry into the machine. But amidst all of the fun that she was having, her knuffle bunny was put into the washer. On their way home, Trixie realizes what happened to her bunny and tries to tell her dad it is back at the Laundromat! After a lot of babbling and crying and screaming, they make it home and neither Trixie nor her dad is happy. Her mother meets them at the door and immediately realized that knuffle bunny is missing! They run back to the Laundromat and pull knuffle bunny out of the washer. Then to everyone’s surprise, Trixie says her first words… “KNUFFLE BUNNY!”

The illustrations in this book were absolutely amazing. The expressions on the faces of Trixie and her father were wonderful. My favorite parts of the illustrations were the backgrounds. Willems put his drawings on top of black and white photographs. All of the black and white pictures were placed on top of a green background. The drawings of the characters occasionally were placed outside of the picture and on the green empty space. This gave the book a new feel and also made you stop and look at the picture more carefully. Willems does a great job with connecting the blank pages in the front of the book with the story. It is a picture of knuffle bunny in the washing machine, so it gives the reader a really good idea as to what is going to happen to the bunny. The copyright and title page gave us a bit of a back story on the parents. It has three pictures: One of the parents getting married, one of Trixie when she was born, and then one of them in front of their house. The dad’s facial gets longer in each of these pictures as well. The back cover of the book continues the story by showing the entire family walking back from the Laundromat. Willems really knows how to engage the reader on every turn of the page.

Pig Pig Gets a Job

By: David McPhail
Pig Pig Gets a Job is about a little that decides that he wants money so he can go to the store and buy something. So he runs home and asks his mom to give him some money. He is shocked when his mother asks him what he is going to do to get some money. She tells him that he has to earn it. So Pig Pig begins to get imaginative. He goes through a whole list of jobs that a child could never do. Every time that he says that he could do one of those big jobs, his mother says that he could do something similar around the house, hinting that he could do house chores to earn an allowance. Like when he says that he can become a mechanic and fix race cars, his mother says that he could wash the race cars too… and that he could wash their car because it was getting dirty. She did this on every page. In the end, Pig Pig gets the brilliant idea that his mother could give him a job and pay him to do things. His mother thinks about it and then asks him what he can do? Pig Pig says that he can wash the car, feed the pet, make lunch, clean his room, and build a birdhouse, everything that his mother had hinted at while he was using his imagination.
I believe that this book relates to the chapter because it is a good read aloud book. After a couple of pages of Pig Pig’s mother hinting at doing house chores, the students would most likely catch onto the pattern and be able to guess what she is going to suggest that Pig Pig do instead of what he is dreaming up. This would be a great book for the students to practice their predictions with. Every page in the book is used, even the title page. I did not realize that the picture on the title page was important to the story. Normally, it is an independent picture that does not follow the story line. This picture started out the story with Pig Pig staring into the store window. That is why Pig Pig wanted money.