Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus!

Bibliography
Willems, Mo. Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus! By Mo Willems.
New York, NY: Hyperion Books. ISBN 9780786819881

Plot Summary
In this humorous and persuasive picture book the reader interacts with the book throughout the entire story. The story begins with the bus driver leaving the reader in charge of the bus but warning against letting the pigeon driving the bus. From beginning to end the pigeon thinks of every reason imaginable to bribes as to why the reader should let the pigeon drive the bus until the end where the pigeon ends up having a temper tantrum.

Critical Analysis
Author Mo Willems does an amazing job at pulling the reader in from the first page where the driver introduces himself and leaves the reader in charge of the bus (or the story) as he warns, “Don’t let the Pigeon Drive the Bus!” The readers will find themselves saying no, every time the pigeon begs and pleads and laughing hilariously as you wonder why the bus driver doesn’t want the pigeon to drive the bus. This book is filled with a wonderful humorous voice.

The simple line drawings of the one-eyed pigeon come alive as the author/illustrator use the eye to express the emotions of the pigeon. The drawings have a cartoon like effect and the over use of lines don’t create a lot of flow or movement but more of a freeze frame effect.

Review Excerpt(s)
Booklist Starred Review: “Willems is a professional animator, and each page has the feel of a perfectly frozen frame of cartoon footage--action, remarkable expression, and wild humor captured with just a few lines.”

Horn Book’s starred review: "Clean, sparely designed pages focus attention on the simply drawn but wildly expressive (and emotive) pigeon, and there’s a particularly funny page-turn when a well-mannered double-page spread with eight vignettes of the pleading pigeon gives way to a full-bleed, full-blown temper tantrum."

Connections
* Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus! DVD includes Read-along subtitles, in which the words are highlighted as they are spoken; the pages have been fully animated; author/illustrator Mo Willems teaches the children to draw Pigeon
* Don’t Let the Pigeon books are a great resource for teaching young writers the various types of sentences such as interrogative, exclamatory, declarative and declarative.