Willems, Mo. (2011) I Broke My Trunk!
New York: Hyperion Books for Children.
This book is too cute! The elephant, Gerald, breaks his trunk. He finds his friend, Piggie, to tell him about it. Piggie is surprised to see his elephant friend with his broken appendage. He asked elephant to tell him the story. Elephant begins by telling him about his day. Gerald includes every detail about his morning, but nothing about his story tells WHY or HOW his trunk got broken. I love it on page 45 when Piggie asks, yet again, “HOW DID YOU BREAK YOUR TRUNK?” We’ve all been a part of stories like this where we feel like we will never make it to the ending. Piggie was truly frustrated! In the end, we find that Gerald did not break his trunk from all of the work/play he had done that morning. And, Piggie ends up breaking his snout in the same way that Gerald broke his trunk.
I read this book to my class. Since it was fairly short, I read it during the first part of our language arts block.
They seemed to really like the book! I was worried that they may have trouble keeping up with the dialogue and conversation. Since it doesn’t have things like, “Gerald said”, or “Piggie thought”, I thought they may not be able to follow the story. But, they did, with no problems. I did have to explain the difference between and “thought bubble” and a “talk bubble”. I had them make predictions about how Gerald broke his trunk, and like me (and Piggie), they became anxious to know what really happened. They laughed when Piggie found the same fate as Gerald!
robinmclark 