Too Big to Dance
Kindergarten-Grade 3–Alligator Acres, in the steamy bayou of Crawdad County, is home to Cecil the alligator and his friends, Woo the armadillo and Eloise the zebra. One night, they venture out to the county dance where the Cajun music of Corndog Willie and the Slackjaws has the crowd at the Laissez Faire hopping. Poor Eloise is too big to fit into the dance hall, so she wanders off to the nearby hill to listen by her lonesome. Woo spots his friend and, since "Armadillo hearts are precious things, they feel deeper than the river," he goes out to join her. Cecil, missing Woo, grabs an accordion and leads the dancers and musicians out to the hillside for a moon- and starlit dance. The cut-paper illustrations are festive with bright colors and sweet touches throughout. The endpapers resemble strings of colored beads. Unfortunately, the rhymed text has a slightly lumpy meter with some sentences being short and some long. Tenses change from past to present back to past, which can be confusing. Still, the book has a certain charm to it.–Bina Williams, Bridgeport Public Library, CTCopyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.