Leaving the Laundromat with her daddy, toddler Trixie realizes she’s missing her constant and beloved companion, Knuffle Bunny. (Listeners will notice the face of the stuffed rabbit that Dad has just inadvertently loaded into the washing machine.) Unfortunately, Daddy can't seem to comprehend Trixie’s baby talk—“Aggle flaggle klabble!"—when she tries to tell him. All children identify with the bald-headed tot’s dilemma of how to make yourself clear when no one else can decode your singular "language." And they’ll appreciate her solution: to cry like crazy. The memorable line in the story, which your kids will love acting out, is, “She went boneless.” They’ve all been there before. The illustrations of Trixie and her parents, drawn in exuberant, cartoon-like colored inks, and superimposed on black and white photos of the author/illustrator's Brooklyn neighborhood, won Mo Willems his second Caldecott Honor, a mere year after winning that same prestigious silver medal for Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus (2004).

Former toddlers will certainly enjoy reminiscing about their own first words and earliest memories, not to mention digging out their beloved old toys and recalling things they’ve lost and then found. Tell them stories about when they were little and when you were little.

In the equally delectable Knuffle Bunny Too: A Case of Mistaken Identity, for which Mo won his third Caldecott Honor, Trixie is now a talkative and yellow-haired preschooler, on her way to school to show off her one-of-a-kind rabbit to all the kids. Trixie is appalled to discover that her classmate Sonya has the (almost) identical stuffed toy. As the text explains, ominously and with great understatement, “The morning did not go well.” That night, Trixie awakes with a devastating realization. “That is not my bunny,” she informs her sleeping daddy at 2:30 a.m., and they rush downtown to trade the switched toys with Sonja and her dad.

You can print out coloring and activity pages for both books on Mo’s wonderful website, www.pigeonpresents.com. Then, go to www.hyperionbooksforchildren.com, type “KNUFFLE” into the search bar, click on “Knuffle Bunny Too,” and, on the book’s home page, you see the link you can click to print out the Event Kit, which is also full of reproducible pages and fun activities.

Themes: CITIES AND TOWNS. CRYING. FAMILY LIFE. FATHERS AND DAUGHTERS. FRIENDSHIP. HUMOROUS FICTION. LANGUAGE. LOST AND FOUND POSSESSIONS. NEW YORK CITY. PICTURE BOOKS FOR ALL AGES. RABBITS. SCHOOLS. STUFFED ANIMALS. TEACHERS.