Elephant & Piggie Like Reading! (Dan Santat) Books in Order

Dan Santat's books in Elephant & Piggie Like Reading! feel like a friendly extension of the world kids already know. Gerald and Piggie help open the door, but the real fun comes from watching Santat take that beginner-reader format and run with it in his own way. The language stays simple. The energy does not.

The Cookie Fiasco is the clearest example of what he does well at this level. The setup is tiny: Hippo, Croc, and the Squirrels have three cookies and need to share them fairly. That is it. But Santat turns that one small problem into a full emotional storm. Everyone has opinions. Everyone thinks their idea is reasonable. Hippo, who worries the hardest, looks close to crumbling before the cookies do. The joke keeps building, and young readers get a little practice with fairness and fractions almost by accident.

The stakes are cookies, but the feelings are huge.

Harold & Hog Pretend For Real! shifts from snack panic to friendship and play. Harold is loose, upbeat, and ready to jump into pretending. Hog is careful, watchful, and much less eager to go along with every new idea. When the two start playing at being Elephant and Piggie, the book gets a little meta, but the core problem stays very familiar. Two friends want to play together. They just do not picture the game the same way. That makes the story especially good for kids who are learning that imagination is fun, but so are boundaries and compromise.

Across both books, Santat leans on visual timing more than long explanation. Faces do a lot of the work. Speech bubbles land the jokes. Repetition helps new readers feel secure, while the expressions and page turns keep the stories from feeling flat or overly instructional. His art is brighter and more stripped down here than in some of his larger picture books, which suits the format. Everything is built for clarity, pace, and the pleasure of hearing a line read out loud.

This is also a nice corner of Santat's work if you want to see how flexible he is. The same creator who can do the bigger emotional sweep of The Adventures of Beekle or the graphic-novel sprawl of The Aquanaut can also make a 64-page early reader feel sharp, funny, and alive. He does not talk down to the audience. He just meets them where they are.

If you are deciding where to begin, it mostly comes down to the kind of small crisis your reader enjoys most. The Cookie Fiasco is great for kids who love group chaos and problem solving. Harold & Hog Pretend For Real! is better if they like friendship stories and dramatic make-believe. Both are quick, welcoming, and easy to revisit, which is exactly what a good early reader should be.