By Mo Willems
A bus driver steps away and leaves your child in charge of one very determined pigeon who wants to drive the bus.
The bus driver has to go for a little while, and before he leaves he asks you, the person holding the book, to do just one thing: don't let the pigeon drive the bus. Then he's gone, and the pigeon turns up. And oh, does the pigeon want to drive that bus. It asks nicely. It bargains. It sulks. It dreams up excuses, it flatters you, and finally it throws itself into a full flapping, feather-flying tantrum. Your child's only job, the whole way through, is to keep saying no.
A three- or four-year-old spends most of the day being told no, so a book that hands them the power to say it, to a wheedling pigeon who will not take it for an answer, is irresistible. The drawings are almost nothing, just a scribbly pigeon and a lot of white space, so all the comedy lives in the pigeon's face and your child's growing sense of control. It's short, it's a guaranteed laugh, and it gets funnier every single time you read it.