Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus

Title: Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus

Author: Mo Willems 

Illustrator: Mo Willems

Publisher:  Hyperion Books for Children

Genre: Celdecott Award Winner

Level: Beginner

Number of Pages: 36

Pub. Date: 2003

Summary: This is an interactive book that encourages children to respond to the book as it goes. In this book, there is a Pigeon that wants to drive the bus very badly. He tries to convince  the audience to let him drive the bus by using many tactics from bribery to pleading. The audience doesn’t let him drive the bus, which he is quite upset about, but then he sees a big rig and has thoughts of driving that.  

Critique: The author, Mo Willems, uses the design element of lettering and type to make the illustrations of the pigeon really stand out. He uses a darker text on a light background in a speech bubble for the majority of the book, except in an instance where the bird is really upset and the words are sprawled out across two pages in two-colored type that looked like it was angrily and hastily written. This helped get the emotion of the pigeon across. He also uses a different color background for each page instead of using lines or borders, which gives the book a clean yet organized feel.

Response:  I honestly feel in love with this book from the minute I opened it. It has become one of my favorites and makes me laugh every time I read it. I’ve even read it to multiple other people (most being adults) who absolutely love it. Mo Williems is such a great author and really knows how to engage his readers (at any age!

 Assignment:

SMART Board Activities for Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus:

http://exchange.smarttech.com/details.html?id=8bf140df-11db-419a-bc37-95ceaf5d7612

or:

Have students create a new story about what the they wouldn't let the pigeon drive! Like this: