Let me tell you about my relationship with Mo Willems. I did not grow up with Mo Willems. Mo Willems published his first Pigeon book in 2003, when I was in college and had bigger problems. I came to him entirely through my children, which is the humbling experience of discovering a genius after everyone else already knew.
My first Elephant & Piggie book was thrust into my hands by my then-3-year-old with the energy of someone handing you a document that will change your life. "Dad. Read THIS one." She had, I think, already read it approximately 30 times. She wanted to watch me read it for the first time. She was waiting for my reaction.
I read it. I laughed. She looked like she'd won something.
What Mo Willems understands that a lot of children's books don't
Here is the thing about "We Are in a Book!" specifically: it is a book about being a book, and my 4-year-old understood this completely and found it cosmically funny. Gerald the elephant realizes they're in a book. He realizes a reader is reading them right now. Piggie wants to make the reader say something. They make the reader say "BANANA." The book ends, they panic about the book ending, they tell you to read it again.
This is absurdist postmodern humor. For four-year-olds. And it works. It works completely.
The whole series operates on this level. Willems trusts children to get jokes. Not dumbed-down jokes with telegraphed punchlines, but actual jokes with timing and surprise and escalation. Gerald and Piggie have a real friendship — they misunderstand each other, they get jealous, they apologize, they work through things. The emotional beats are real. Kids recognize them because they live them.
The read-aloud experience
I have done the voices so many times that I now do them automatically, involuntarily, the same way I default to a British accent when reading anything remotely posh. Gerald is a medium-high, vaguely anxious tenor with a tendency to over-emote. Piggie is pure enthusiasm, slightly squeaky, always sure. These characters have colonized a corner of my brain that I will never get back.
Here is my honest ranking of the series books we own, by how much I enjoy reading them aloud: (1) We Are in a Book, (2) I Will Surprise My Friend, (3) Should I Share My Ice Cream, (4) I Am Going, (5) Waiting Is Not Easy. I do not regret any of these purchases. I have bought them as gifts for approximately six families. I am an Elephant & Piggie evangelist and I am not sorry.
Compared to the other books in my daughter's rotation
My 4-year-old has a complicated reading canon right now. It includes some absolute classics (we're doing Frog and Toad, which is its own separate masterpiece, review coming) and some things that I believe were designed by people who have never met a child. Elephant & Piggie sits at the top. Always at the top.
The thing about a good picture book is whether it has a life after the 40th reading. Some books become wallpaper. These don't. Gerald's existential spirals remain funny. Piggie's optimism remains charming. The friendship remains real. I don't know how he did it but Willems built something with a genuinely long half-life and parents notice that even when kids don't.
Essential. If you have a 3–6 year old and don't own at least two of these, stop reading this and go fix that. Start with "We Are in a Book!" or "Should I Share My Ice Cream?" Buy them in a bundle. You'll thank me.