Saturday 10 January 2009

Review - Alligator Boy



Alligator Boy by Cynthia Rylant and Diane Goode tells the (short) tale of a boy who, tired of being a boy becomes, with the help of an aunt, an alligator. His parents still love him just the same after his mother is reassured by a vet that he will be fine as long as he continues to attend school.

I bought this for the illustrations, which are charming. The text is odd, switching from a-b-c-b pattern to rhyming couplets and in several places the lines don't scan at all.

What is special about this book is that the boy-alligator is neither a dream nor a phase -- at the end of a book he remains an alligator-boy.

Utterly charming. (supposedly for 4-8 year olds)

Alligator Boy by Cynthia Rylant and Diane Goode