Alligator Baby

Ted McGee is an associate professor of English specializing in
children’s literature at St. Jerome’s College, University of
Waterloo.

Alligator Baby is classic Munsch. Little Kristen knows a human baby when
she sees one, but her frazzled parents do not. Instead of going to the
hospital to have their baby, they drive to the zoo—not once, not
twice, but (this being classic Munsch) three times—and happily return
with a baby alligator, a baby seal, and a baby gorilla. So Kristen
cycles to the zoo at night, finds her sibling, and brings home a baby
with “people legs,” “people hands,” and “a people face.” In
short, she saves the day. She also anticipates the solution to the
problem created by her parents: what to do with all the other babies,
for “there is a seal baby in the bathtub and an alligator baby in the
fish tank and a gorilla baby hanging from the chandelier.”

The solution to that problem appears in the penultimate illustration,
which depicts alligator, seal, and gorilla parents crashing through the
doorway to retrieve their offspring. Hence, in the final picture, hugs
and cuddles for all. The last two pictures are crucial because they
provide a resolution not mentioned in the text. Martchenko’s
illustrations combine moments of high drama with comic subplots (such as
the monkeys breaking out of the zoo). Highly recommended.