I quite enjoy Mo Willems’ Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus! and thought I would see about some of his other titles. I read Knuffle Bunny: A Cautionary Tale last night with my little guy and couldn’t help but wonder if Willems would have had a story if little Trixie had known how to sign.
Knuffle Bunny is a cute tale about a pre-verbal toddler who takes a trip to the Laundromat with her daddy. After helping her daddy load the laundry and put the money in the machine, they leave to walk back home. What the reader notices is that her beloved stuffed bunny somehow managed to get put in the wash with all the clothes. When Trixie realizes that Knuffle Bunny is missing, she starts babbling frantically to her father. Since Daddy cannot understand, her babbling soon escalates into bawling and thrashing. By the time they get home, he is just as unhappy as she is. When Trixie’s mommy asks where Knuffle Bunny is, they rush back to the Laundromat where her daddy retrieves him from the washing machine. Trixie celebrates by speaking her first words: “Knuffle Bunny”!
The characters appear as coloured sketches over digital photos in sepia tone. It’s a very cool effect that immediately caught the attention of my two-year-old. He enjoyed the story very much as well. I pointed out Knuffle Bunny being left behind in the machine and he was anxious to see if they would be able to find him again. We discussed how Trixie couldn’t talk yet, and so, could not tell her daddy that she didn’t have her stuffed animal. I thought back to my son at Trixie’s age and knew that our family could never have told this story. If he had left a toy behind, he would have signed to us and we would have understood. So many times when toddlers try to tell us things, we look at them quizzically, then ask them not to get fussy, as the daddy did in Knuffle Bunny. I really do believe that in the majority of cases, temper tantrums in healthy children are the result of not having their needs and desires responded to (I purposely did not say “met” as I do not believe in doing everything my child asks, but rather acknowledging what he asks for / tells me).
Had Trixie and her daddy known baby sign language, she could have signed BUNNY and WHERE and they could have returned immediately to the Laundromat to rescue him. That would have made for a lack lustre story though and Trixie would never have had the motivation that day to speak her first words.
I guess Mo Willems got it right as Knuffle Bunny has already been requested for bedtime story again tonight!