The pair's friendship is put to the test in My New Toy when elephant Gerald accidentally breaks Piggie's prized possession. 1/08) are back in their fifth and sixth easy-reader episodes. (Preschool, Primary) BFFs Gerald and Piggie (I Am Invited to a Party! and There Is a Bird on Your Head!, rev. (c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. These masterful mini-dramas will delight and amuse easy-reader and picture-book audiences, alike.-Kelly Roth, Bartow County Public Library, Cartersville, GA (c) Copyright 2010.

Savvy readers will know exactly what happens when each friend thinks that the other has left. They sit behind opposite sides of a large stone and wait to be surprised. Mischievous Gerald and Piggie then plan together how to 'surprise' one another in the same way.

In the second title, the two watch a squirrel surprise a friend by jumping out from behind a rock. The pals then decide that playing together is more fun than playing with a toy anyway. Piggie is mad, sad, and finally embarrassed (a squirrel shows them that the 'broken toy' is of the 'break-and-snap' variety). When Gerald accidentally breaks Piggie's new toy, he is by turns ashamed, chagrined, and apologetic. K-Gr 2-In classic Willems style, the characters' expressions and body language carry both stories, with the deceptively simple line art saying far more than the slight, though whimsical, texts. When Squirrel comes around and spots the toy as one of the break-and-snap variety, showing it's as good as new, the friends soon realize that playing together is more fun than any old toy. This offers plenty of opportunity for new readers to learn useful words like sad and mad, but the charm comes in the way Willems captures the emotions of young children, sometimes with a line of dialogue ( You broke it! ), and sometimes with an artful drawn line that says as much as words.-Cooper, Ilene Copyright 2008 Booklist From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Elephant's sorry is not accepted by Piggie, though they do share a few tears. At first it seems as though there will be a break in the friendship as well as a broken toy. And throw it he does, right up in the air, and then it smashes in two pieces. Elephant thinks that perhaps it's a throwing toy. In I Love My New Toy!, Piggie has a great new toy, although she's not exactly sure what it does. *Starred Review* Two new additions to the Theodor Seuss Geisel Award-winning Elephant and Piggie series.

Today I Will Fly! by Mo Willems