Mo Willems Workshop presents a new YouTube series, Reading aloud! With children!on August 21st. In the series, produced by the Hidden Pigeon Company itself, children read and comment on their favorite books by Mo Willems, with one title being presented per episode.
“The concept came about when our digital director watched her daughter read one of Mo’s books and saw her blossoming and making her own comments as she read,” said Simone Warrick, production and creative manager at HPC, which produced and directed the series. “We wanted to encourage and inspire children to read by showing them a reflection of themselves on screen. Sometimes the children struggle with pronunciation or stumble over a word. We left these moments in because they are a true reflection of their experiences and we want to shine a light on all reading levels.”
The children helped choose the books they would read on screen. “The titles were chosen internally and by the children themselves during the casting process,” Warrick said. “We really focused on being responsive to each child and choosing the books that resonated with them.”
There are three episodes planned per month, the first being “Elephant + Piglet: Should I Share My Ice Cream?”. The other 10 episodes in the first series are “The Pigeon Must Go to School!”, “Elephant + Piglet: My New Friend Is So Funny!”, “Pigeon Finds a Hotdog!”, “Naked Mole Rat Gets Dressed”, “Sam, the Scaredest Child”, “That’s Not a Good Idea”, “Elephant + Piglet: I Really Like Food”, “Cuddle Bunny Too”, “Elephant + Piglet: A Big Guy Took My Ball!” and “The Pigeon Has Feelings Too!”. More episodes are planned.
Reading aloud! With children! Streams on the Mo Willems Workshop YouTube page, which also includes Snack Doodlesa series in which the author teaches children how to make doodles of letters and numbers; Knuffle Bunny across Americawhere children teach the character things like hockey or building a robot; and The dove explainsin which children help the pigeon, among other things, to answer questions correctly.
