Published: 1st November 1978
Publisher: Puffin
Pages: 32
Format: Paperback
Genre: Junior Fiction
★ ★ ★ ★ – 4 Stars
The Enormous Crocodile is incredibly hungry-and incredibly greedy. His favourite meal is a plump, juicy little child, and he intends to gobble up as many of them as he can! But when the other animals in the jungle join together to put an end to his nasty schemes, the Enormous Crocodile learns a lesson he won’t soon forget.
I reread this book not that long ago and it is a lot longer than I remember it being. I was thinking it was a picture book but in reality it’s like a long book but in the style of a picture book, 32 giant pages with pictures but the length of a kid’s paperback in terms of words. Not that it isn’t still incredibly enjoyable and fun, but I was surprised. It’s quite wordy but despite this it isn’t a complicated story or overly detailed.
I love the crocodile’s plans to eat children. His cunning ideas would have been perfect if it wasn’t for the meddling animals getting in his way. I love a villain being a villain because they want to, no justification or backstory.
Once again the downfall is telling people your plans and think they won’t dob on you. In Dahl’s world the animals can talk to the humans and it’s a great parallel universe where nobody uses that to their advantage except to warn people about being eaten. There are also a lot of human activities right on the edge of the jungle so maybe that could be something they improve in the future after this determined crocodile’s schemes?
Blake’s illustration are classic as expected. The text fill up a lot of the page but the pictures integrated well around the text. The crocodile’s disguises and hiding places are clever and Blake balances larger scenes and simple pictures well.
There is a level of disbelief as with a lot of Dahl’s books and I like that it is clearly one bad crocodile that needs punishing, not all. There is balance and Dahl is clear that this one specific croc is naughty, not all crocs are children eaters (something I think Jaws could have tried).
This truly is a book that blurs the lines on whether it’s a picture book or not. There’s a lot of pictures, but there are also a lot of words so brace yourself going in that is isn’t the quick read you might be planning for.
You can purchase The Enormous Crocodile via the following
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