Elephant & Piggie (We Are in a Book!) Reading Level: A Complete Guide

What Reading Level Is Elephant & Piggie (We Are in a Book!)?

Elephant & Piggie (We Are in a Book!) is a K–1 reading level by our editorial assessment, with a Flesch-Kincaid grade level of approximately 1.6. At around 250 words spread across 64 pages, it has a very low word-per-page ratio — the text is almost entirely dialogue, presented in speech bubbles, with most of the emotional and comedic information conveyed through Willems’ expressive character illustrations. The individual words are simple, but the book’s structure is more sophisticated than its Flesch-Kincaid score suggests: the concept of a book being aware of its own reader is a genuinely complex literary idea, introduced here with such lightness that most children grasp it immediately and find it delightful.

The Elephant & Piggie series as a whole won the Theodor Seuss Geisel Medal, awarded to the most distinguished American book for beginning readers published in a given year, which reflects how successfully the books meet beginning readers where they are. Elephant & Piggie won the medal in 2011 specifically for this title, recognizing it as the standout entry in a series that is already recognized as exceptional. The speech bubble format means children learn to read dialogue in its most natural form — without dialogue tags — which builds a skill they will use for the rest of their reading lives.

For parents who use specific reading level systems: we recommend checking your child’s level on Lexile.com or AR BookFinder for official scores, or asking your child’s teacher for their Guided Reading or DRA level.

Is Elephant & Piggie a Read-Aloud or Independent Read?

Elephant & Piggie works brilliantly as both a read-aloud for ages 4–7 and an independent read for ages 5–7, and it is one of the most participatory read-alouds at this level. The dialogue format and the book’s direct address to the reader — Gerald and Piggie know you are there and keep looking at you — makes children feel like active participants in the story rather than passive listeners. Most adults can read the whole book aloud in about 8–12 minutes, though a participatory reading almost always runs longer.

As a read-aloud, the two-character dialogue format is almost irresistibly suited to being read by two people. Gerald and Piggie have completely distinct voices — Gerald is anxious, verbose, and prone to overreaction; Piggie is cheerful, brief, and irrepressibly pleased with herself — and reading them in character is one of the great easy read-aloud performances. The book’s central joke — that Gerald and Piggie can make the reader say “BANANA!” by pointing to the word on the page — gives children a moment of genuine agency inside a story, which they find thrilling in a way that is hard to explain and easy to observe. Most children, when Gerald and Piggie point to the word “BANANA,” say it without being asked.

For independent reading, the speech bubble format means children do not have to track dialogue tags — they simply follow the bubbles, which are always clearly assigned to Gerald or Piggie by their shape, color, and position. This makes Elephant & Piggie unusually accessible for early readers who are building reading fluency, because the visual format removes one layer of decoding complexity while the expressive illustrations carry the emotional content of each exchange. A child who has learned the names Gerald and Piggie can follow the conversation independently from very early in their reading development.

There is nothing in this book that requires parental preparation. The emotional climax — Gerald’s distress that the book will end — is handled with such lightness and such a good joke that children find it funny rather than sad. The ending is exactly right.

What Is Elephant & Piggie (We Are in a Book!) About?

Piggie notices something — something is watching them. She investigates. She looks at the reader. She discovers, with enormous excitement, that she and Gerald are in a book, and that someone is reading it right now. Gerald is skeptical, then alarmed, then delighted. Piggie shows him they can make the reader say things: she points to the word “BANANA” on the page, and — as you just proved — it works. Gerald is thrilled. They experiment with their power over the reader. They laugh. They have a wonderful time.

Then Gerald notices the page numbers. The book is almost over. When the book ends, will they still exist? Will the reader go away? Gerald begins to panic. Piggie has an answer, characteristically practical and characteristically perfect: the reader can read the book again. Gerald is consoled. The book ends — but the reader can start again from the beginning, which means Piggie was right all along. It is a funny, warm, quietly philosophical little book about stories and readers and the relationship between them, and it works on every level it is aimed at simultaneously.

Elephant & Piggie Characters

Elephant & Piggie Themes and Lessons

The central theme of Elephant & Piggie (We Are in a Book!) is the relationship between a story and its reader — made visible, playful, and immediate in a way that no picture book or early reader had done quite so directly before. Gerald and Piggie do not just exist in a book; they know they exist in a book, they know you are reading it, and they are delighted by this. The book turns the normally invisible relationship between reader and text into the subject of the story, which gives children a genuine and accessible introduction to what literary critics call metafiction — a story that is aware of itself as a story. Willems does this with such lightness that children simply experience it as funny and surprising, which is the best possible way to introduce a complex idea.

The book is also, more simply, about the friendship between Gerald and Piggie — specifically the way their different temperaments fit together. Gerald worries; Piggie solves. Gerald overreacts; Piggie stays cheerful. Gerald needs reassurance; Piggie provides it. This dynamic, repeated across all 25 books in the series, gives children a model of friendship that is not about sameness but about complementarity — the ways two very different people can take care of each other. Children who recognize themselves in Gerald are reassured by Piggie; children who recognize themselves in Piggie are validated by Gerald’s need for them.

For teachers, Elephant & Piggie is one of the most teachable texts in the K–2 library for reader-response and author’s craft conversations. The book makes the reader’s role explicit, which opens the door to conversations about what readers bring to a text, what authors do to create that experience, and what the relationship between them actually is. These are sophisticated literary concepts that Willems makes accessible to kindergartners through humor and directness.

Discussion starters for families: How did Gerald and Piggie know you were reading the book? Why did it make Gerald worried that the book was almost over? Was Piggie right that you could read the book again? What would you say to Gerald and Piggie if they could hear you? Do you think all books have characters who know someone is reading them?

How Long Is Elephant & Piggie (We Are in a Book!)?

Elephant & Piggie has 64 pages and approximately 250 words — the pages are generously sized with large illustrations and speech bubbles, so the page count is higher than the word count suggests. Most adults can read it aloud in about 8–12 minutes, though a participatory reading that pauses for the “BANANA” moment and for children’s reactions to Gerald’s panic typically runs longer.

A child reading independently at a kindergarten or early first-grade level will typically finish in about 10–15 minutes. Many children read it more than once in a sitting, particularly once they have discovered that they can make Piggie’s trick work every time by saying “BANANA” when she points to it.

Books Similar to Elephant & Piggie (We Are in a Book!)

If your child loves Elephant & Piggie, these titles share its humor, its dialogue-driven format, or its portrait of a friendship built on complete mutual devotion:

About the Author and Illustrator

Mo Willems is an American author and illustrator who is widely considered the most important figure in early reader and picture book publishing of the past two decades. Before writing children’s books, he worked as a writer and animator on Sesame Street, where he won six Emmy Awards, and that background in character-driven, dialogue-based comedy is visible on every page of the Elephant & Piggie series. He is the author-illustrator of the Pigeon series (beginning with Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus!, 2003), the Knuffle Bunny trilogy, the Cat the Cat series, and the 25-book Elephant & Piggie series. The Elephant & Piggie series won the Theodor Seuss Geisel Medal three times — an almost unparalleled achievement for a single series — and individual titles have received additional Geisel Honors. Willems has said that the Elephant & Piggie books were written to give beginning readers the experience of reading with complete comprehension and genuine pleasure, rather than the labored decoding experience that early reading can sometimes feel like. That goal is evident in every book in the series, and in Elephant & Piggie (We Are in a Book!) particularly, where the reader is not just an audience but a participant in the story. Willems served as the Education Artist in Residence at the Kennedy Center from 2019 to 2021.