Crocodile Gene and His Friends
Grade 3-5-This is the story of three unlikely companions who come together to form a House of Friendship: Gene, a crocodile who works the day shift in a zoo; Floptop, a creature "completely unknown to science" transported from a tropical forest by mistake; and Gail, a child. Soon they are threatened by an old woman who has a pet rat and goes around looking for evil. Why she chooses to torment them is never clear, except for the fact that they embody goodness and kindness. When they finally vanquish her, the scene is almost anticlimactic. The setting is clearly urban; however, no sense of place is established, except for one episode in which the friends encounter the Russian bureaucracy while trying to buy bricks. The plot is unconvincing and the characters are flat; the total effect is an overly whimsical tale that is neither amusing nor touching but is instead rather silly and pointless.Jane Gardner Connor, South Carolina State Library, ColumbiaCopyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.