If you Give a Pig a Pancake

Laura  Numeroff and Felicia Bond have created the wonderful series of books that are framed by personification and sequencing. Other titles including If you Give a Mouse a Cookie, If you Give a Cat a Cupcake, and If you Give a Moose a Muffin, as well as several other enjoyable stories in the line. I really love If you Give a Pig a Pancake because of the friendship that this young girl has with the pig, and most of the stories in this line have a young child who complies with the animal and all of their associated requests. Simply I love it because these characters carry on as though building a tree fort with a pig is completely normal, and I think children usually very often make wonderful friends of pets and animals.

The frame work also includes aspects of cause and effect, alongside personification and sequential ordering. With all of these stories, re-telling for a comprehension would be effective, but more importantly I think as you correlate the cause and effect that comes from the plot line, students could rebuild the story with sequencing. I am thinking in terms of puzzle pieces, and for a pre-activity they could share with a friend what their predictions of the story's outcome...what will happen if you give a pig a pancake? As the book is a simple read, I would allow students to continue to work in pairs to read the book together, and as a post activity they could create a time table, ordering the events of the story from 1-10 or 15, and piecing the cause-and effect elements together. These books are all very accessible for younger readers, I would say Kindergarten or 1st grade through 3rd grade.