Elephant & Piggie - Today I Will Fly! — Chapter 1

About This Passage

Selected because Mo Willems compresses an entire ethics of friendship into a six-line exchange. Gerald's correction ("You did not fly. You jumped") is followed by Piggie's defense ("It was a big jump") and Gerald's elegant concession-and-correction ("Yes. It was a big jump. But you did not fly"). The structure is a small lesson in how to disagree with a friend without disrespecting the achievement. Notice that Willems uses no description, no dialogue tags beyond the necessary, and no commentary. The mechanical lesson is dialogue punctuation; the rhetorical lesson is the rhythm of acknowledge-then-correct.

Narration Prompt

Summarize this chapter, then explain what you think the author most wanted the reader to notice or feel. What techniques did the author use?

Discussion Questions

1. Mo Willems writes the entire book as pure dialogue with almost no narration, description, or interiority. Argue what this radical minimalism accomplishes that a more conventional early-reader prose could not. What does Willems trust his reader to supply, and what is the effect of asking for that supplying?
2. Gerald denies that Piggie can fly five times in five different ways. He never weakens. Yet he is presented as a friend and at the end says "good luck" with apparent sincerity. Argue what makes Gerald's repeated denials feel like an act of friendship rather than an act of dismissal.

+ 3 more questions in the complete study guide