The Story: A group of birds, animals and insects are wondering where the crocodile is. The crocodile is much closer than they think and each double page spread reveals a little bit more of him until we see that one of the animals is actually sitting on the crocodile’s head. The crocodile reveals his presence and then the final spread reveals him sitting alone……………..!
Have You Seen the Crocodile? has a cast of boldly illustrated, colourful characters and a great repetitive text. I started reading the book to my daughter when she was three and now at four and a half she still thinks that at the end of the book the animals ‘are hiding’. I have also read the book to older children who are sure that the creatures have probably come to a fairly grisly end (the crocodile has such a satisfied look on his face in the last picture that it is easy to see why they may be drawn to this conclusion!). Whichever way you interpret the ending Have You Seen the Crocodile is a lot of fun to read, the humour also lies in the fact that the reader knows something that the animals don’t, the crocodile is closer than they all realise!
There are several books in this series which I first read when I started teaching. The stories’ repetitive text with clear picture prompts make them great books for beginner readers.
Age Range: 3 +
Author / Illustrator: Colin West
Readitdaddy also recommends The Big Book of Nonsense by Colin West on his blog today. We downloaded it FREE from iTunes (iPad and iPhone) and have had a lot of fun with the Tongue Twisters 🙂
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