It’s a Sign!

K-Gr 2–Two nondescript animal characters, named One and Two, stand at tables writing “signs,” which are essentially word cards. One makes paper hats for each of them and for Kat, a third character who enters the scene. The conversation continues to revolve around making more signs. The three friends are very supportive of each other and enthusiastic every time a new word is spelled out on a sign. Their caring connection is truly sweet, yet is not enough to pull readers in. Midway through the book, a fourth character named Four is introduced. Four seems to help pull the story together by spelling and writing out the word “club.” Their club will be “THE PAPER-FOLDING-LETTER-WRITING-WORD-FORMING-SIGN-MAKING CLUB.” Thus concludes the book, except for the last few pages when Elephant and Piggie, title characters of Mo Willems’s “Elephant and Piggie Like Reading!” series that includes this book, chime in to proclaim, “Clubs are fun!” and decide to create their own club. This story doesn’t quite flow. The lead characters’ names are very awkward for early readers; they are clearly not phonetic reading like some of the other rhyming vocabulary words, such as hat, cat, and sat. The book contains little to no action or plot, and even the illustrations are bland and lack interest.