From Caldecott-winning illustrator David Small and bestselling author Bonny Becker, an unforgettable Christmas story that will leave the whole family giggling. When Alice Jayne finds a crocodile under the tree on Christmas Eve, her family goes into an uproar! The Christmas Crocodile doesn’t mean to be bad, not really, but soon he is eating up Christmas–from the dinner roast to the left stove-top burner…even the Christmas tree! Everyone has an opinion about what to do with him. Uncle Theodore suggests they send him to Africa, Father recommends the zoo, and Aunt Figgy mentions an orphanage. But Alice Jayne thinks the Christmas Crocodile deserves a real family. Can she find him a new home? And will she and the family survive till Christmas morning, with that naughty crocodile gobbling up everything in sight?
I thought this story about a crocodile at Christmas was pretty silly. :) There were a few funny parts, but a few parts that I thought were a little too much. The story ranges just from Christmas Eve to Christmas morning, and while the story is set at Christmas, it feels more like a crocodile book than a Christmas story.
Bonny Becker is the author of 16 award-winning children’s books, including the best-selling Mouse and Bear picture books. The first in the series, A Visitor for Bear, was a New York Times bestseller, winner of the E.B. White Read Aloud Award and the SCBWI Golden Kite. Among her other books are The Christmas Crocodile with Caldecott-winning illustrator, David Small, her latest Mouse and Bear book, A Christmas for Bear, September 2017 and The Frightful Ride of Michael McMichael, winner of the Parent’s Choice Fun Award. Bonny lives in Seattle with her husband and has two adult daughters.
David Small was born and raised in Detroit. In school he became known as “the kid who could draw good,” but David never considered a career in art because it was so easy for him. At 21, after many years of writing plays, David took the advice of a friend who informed him that the doodles he made on the telephone pad were better than anything he had ever written. He switched his major to Art and never looked back. After getting his MFA at the Yale Graduate School of Art, David taught art for many years on the college level, ran a film series, and made satirical sketches for campus newspapers. Approaching tenure, he wrote and illustrated a picture book, Eulalie and the Hopping Head, which he took to New York, pounding the pavements and collecting rejections for a month in the dead of winter. Eulalie was published in 1981. Although tenure at the college did not follow, many more picture books did, as well as extensive work for national magazines and newspapers. His drawings appeared regularly in The New Yorker and The New York Times. A learn-as-you-go illustrator, David’s books have been translated into several languages, made into animated films and musicals, and have won many of the top awards accorded to illustration, including the 1997 Caldecott Honor and The Christopher Medal for The Gardener written by his wife, Sarah Stewart, and the 2001 Caldecott Medal for So, You Want To Be President? by Judith St. George. “At the Caldecott ceremony in San Francisco,” said David, “facing that veritable sea of smiling faces — of librarians, of friends in publishing, of my family and other well-wishers — I was so overcome that I lost my voice and croaked my way through the speech. Having been turned from a frog into a prince by the American Library Association, before their eyes that night, I turned back into a frog.” (Bio via davidsmallbooks.com)
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