Children's books: Marine animals: "How to Get an Alligator Out of the Bathtub", "Float", and "The Octopus

How to Get an Alligator Out of the Bathtub by Lynsey Martin, illustrated by Colleen C. Coggins (MamaBear Books)
Float by Larry Daley (Bookling Media)
The Octopus by Guojing (Two Lions)

Back into the world of children's books...this time with marine animals!

In How to Get an Alligator Out of the Bathtub, it's bathtime, but there's a problem—there's an alligator in the bathtub!

Luckily this particular alligator is reasonably charming (snobby, yes, but good-natured). The boys want their bathtub back, but they pretty quickly get over any residual fear of being eaten (though...parents in Florida...maybe remind your kids that alligators in the bathtub are all good and well, but only in fiction?). It's a quick-moving and playful story, with equally playful illustrations to help carry the story along.

I read an ARC and hope that there's been a last round of proofreading since the ARC was made available; I appreciate that they story isn't in rhyme (rhyme can be nice, but it takes some serious skill to keep it from feeling contrived), but there are some minor punctuation errors. I learned so much about grammar and punctuation through reading as a kid (ah, the American education system, where teaching these things is considered a "nice to have" rather than a "must have"!) that I always wonder what kids pick up from small errors. (I am probably overthinking this.)

All that said, this is super cute, and I can imagine little kids dreaming up their own alligators in the bathtub. A good one to pair with an alligator stuffed animal as a birthday gift.

In Float, Rosie's been waiting for weeks for just this day—field trip to the aquarium! There's a baby sea turtle, and she could not be more excited. As a bonus, she has the best lunch ever...until a seagull steals her lunchbox, and she has to leap into action to rescue her snacks.

This is adorable. The illustrations are colorful and detailed—probably my favorite illustration is the one where the seagull actually steals Rosie's lunchbox, but Rosie sprinting through the aquarium's atrium, leaving chaos in her wake, is a close second—and the story lively. Rosie is clearly a live wire, and, ah, stopping to think before she acts is not her forte.

Adults reading this with kids might want to have a bit of a discussion about how running in an aquarium or similar is not advised, and jumping in the aquarium tanks is definitely not advised(!). I would also not advise that adults take Rosie's lunch box as a guideline, as she seems to have about 75% junk and 25% food that will not make her crash in an hour...but I think kids will enjoy the colorful chaos of the book.

And finally, in The Octopus, a little girl finds a baby octopus struggling on the beach—and when she helps it get to safety, she goes on an underwater adventure.

My family had a copy of Jan Ormerod's Sunshine when I was growing up, and my gosh I loved that book. Like The Octopus, it's a wordless picture book, all the character's emotions and thoughts played out across their faces and actions rather than through words. A successful wordless picture book takes such a tremendous amount of skill, and it was such fun to see how things played out in The Octopus. The illustrations are lovely, with soft colors and some intentional haziness. The little girl's adventure is so fantastical (that picture of all the seashells glowing like gems!), and it also has a subtle message about the damage pollution does to marine life.

This one should probably be read to young kids with a clear reminder that no matter what happens to book characters, real-life kiddos can't breathe underwater and shouldn't go gallivanting near the water's edge without an adult nearby! But my gosh it's sweet. At the end, you can just hear the little girl chattering to her mother about her adventure, and her mother enjoying the imagination of a child.

Thanks to the authors and publishers for providing review copies through NetGalley.