Illustrated by Will Terry
The Three Little Gators is a similar story to the Three Little Pigs, the three animals all go out and build houses. Two of the houses are not made well enough and fail under the pressure of the evil animal character. That is where the similarities end though. The gators live in a Texas swamp. This location is a very interesting pick because there is not a lot of picture books a reader can think of that are located in a swamp in Texas. The gators say bye to mama gator and set off on their journey to build houses. The first obviously smarter gator comes upon rocks and builds a house out of them while the other two gators say that is too much work. The second gator comes upon sticks and makes a house. Finally, the third gator comes upon sand and thinks this is perfect house making material. The big bottomed boar comes around and instead of blowing down the house like the wolf. The boar apparently has no pride and just wiggles his big bottom on the sandy house and then the stick house. When the boar gets to the rock house, with all of the three gators in, he fails at knocking it down. He also tries to go through the chimney but then his big bottom gets burnt. This boar's life choices are just not that smart.The gators end up scaring away the burnt boar and each gator builds its own sturdy rock house. The story is hilarious and the idea that a boar wiggles his bottom to knock down houses is also rather hysterical. The pictures compliment the story perfectly. Readers are sure to appreciate the twist on this classic tale.
Reviewed by Kimberly Bowma n