Willa the Wonderful Book

Willa the Wonderful is a picture book about a young pig girl, Willa, choosing a career of being a fairy princess. Her teacher, Mr. Lane, assigns them to write a report on what their favorite career is. Willa chose a fairy princess. This career soon became disliked among peers and her family. Classmates thought that she shouldn't wear her costume, to stop throwing fairy dust, and just avoid Willa at all costs. But Willa does something heroic in which she saves Sherman's life. Saving Sherman's life becomes noticed and soon everyone respects Willa and her fairy princess self.

The overall theme of Willa the Wonderful is to hold on to your own values. Although classmates were being mean to her and teachers disregarding Willa and her costume, she was still kind and engaged in what she loved most: her fairy princess career costume.

When I was reading Willa the Wonderful, I was quite confused on the dislike for Willa's career. Willa was very kind and energetic towards all the classmates, which made me sad that they were excluding her. It made me think of elementary school years where some of my classmates would get made fun of for what they wore or liked. This is a common problem for a lot of students and Willa the Wonderful touches on this issue.

I am a little hesitant to reccomend this picture book to children. Although Willa held on to her values, it portrayed a message that you need to do something monumental to be well liked again. In this case, Willa was disliked by the majority of the characters in the story until she saved Sherman's life. It seems that her classmates started liking her again only to celebrate saving Sherman, and not because of her actual personality of kindness and respect to all.