The Pigeon HAS to go to School

So the time has come. And pigeon is anxious. She would rather you didn’t read out the title. She doesn’t want to be reminded. Anyway, there’s no need for school, she already knows everything. Well, almost everything. There is so much to worry about, including, for those of us who already know her, the difficulty of learning to read when you have only one very big eye. Mo Willems’ familiar character blusters, moans, puzzles and protests her way through the book. She shrinks dramatically when she acknowledges how scared she is but mostly she dominates the otherwise blank pages with the force of her personality and the cleverness of Willems’ characterisation. How she is eventually convinced that school really might be the place for her is ingeniously achieved; and Willems provides an early clue to the one element of the school experience that pigeon can really look forward to.