What Time Is It, Mr. Crocodile?
A crocodile goes through his day, with pesky monkeys in his way. (OK, that rhyme is all mine. Don't worry. The book is much better.)
This story is based on the children's game, What Time is it, Mr. Wolf? In this case, the wolf is replaced by a crocodile and the children are five little monkeys, following the crocodile as he goes about his day. The title is repeated by the monkeys on every two-page spread and the crocodile responds by explaining which activity it's time for him to do.
"Time to start off my day at the Stingray Café, with a barnacle bagel and sea-slug soufflé."
The rhythm and rhyme are fun, lyrical and never forced. You'll be happy to read this one over and over again.
The illustrations add a great deal of humor to the story. With five pesky little monkeys to portray, the illustrator has them getting into a lot more trouble than the text could possibly convey. My son loves the monkeys. He carefully examines the illustrations to see what one is doing and laughs at their mischief.
They cause lots of trouble for poor Mr. Crocodile: dropping books on his head, adding bananas to his grocery cart, tripping him on a banana peel and finally dropping a wrench in his monkey-catching mobile. In the end, the crocodile is too tired to make dinner, so the monkeys make it for him. It's the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
In keeping with the time theme, each two-page spread has a clock showing the time, as each spread represents an hour of the day. There are alarm clocks, town clocks, even a sun dial. My son points out every one, and soon I'll be teaching him how to tell time using this book.
I love books with multiple dimensions — various levels of entertainment value for different ages of kids, as well as different educational components. This is one of those books.
