Kiss the Crocodile, written by Sean Taylor and illustrated by Ben Mantle, is a story which highlights fun, friendship and play. It also very subtly highlights how we perceive others — Little Crocodile may have a lot of teeth and have sharp claws, but all he wants to do is play and make friends.

It follows three best friends — Monkey, Tortoise and Anteater, who are having fun and playing fun and silly games together in the jungle, like ‘Stick Splash’, ‘Silly Dancing’ and ‘Scary Monsters’.

But then, a brand new game is invented by Little Crocodile’s mum, called ‘Kiss the Crocodile’. Little Crocodile really wants them to play. It is a daring game, in which each of them takes turns to sneak up on Little Crocodile carefully and kiss him without waking him up.

Mantle’s illustrations are bright, fun and artistic, filled with beautiful colours. The story uses repetition throughout to show the tension build up of the daring game, and the illustrations highlight this. The text also makes use of effective sound words in bold within the illustrations throughout, which shows emotion and expression perfectly.

Kiss the Crocodile is a fun story about friendship and play that young children will love and enjoy. It has a super cute and funny twist at the end too — a perfect book for storytime!

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