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

Narration Prompt

Summarize the chapter's argument or narrative arc, then identify the central tension and evaluate whether the author handles it honestly.

Discussion Questions

1. The book's central question is whether being lifted by a bird counts as flying. The book leaves the question unresolved. Argue whether this ambiguity is a feature or a flaw, and use Austin's account of felicity conditions for speech acts to clarify what would have to be true for Piggie's claim "I flew" to succeed as a true statement.
2. Willems writes the entire book as pure dialogue, without narration, description, or interiority. Argue what this radical minimalism accomplishes that conventional early-reader prose cannot, and place it in dialogue with at least one tradition of dialogue-only narrative for adults (Beckett, the experimental novel, the dialogues of Plato).

+ 2 more questions in the complete study guide