I'll Love You Till the Crocodiles Smile

Unconditional love, but not of the sickly-sweet kind, is the essence of this rather different bedtime tale. Herein are featured adult jungle animals and their offspring in the most unlikely of activities: wide-eyed kayaking crocodiles pass a croc dentist, wiggly snakes cross the water by means of zip wires, rhinos cavort, lollipops in paws upon a festive float, slow-crawling sloths sporting yoga pants entertain the elephants and clouds of globe-trotting fleas cause chimps to sneeze, while giraffes that might laugh ‘at knock-knock jokes while taking a bath / and sipping sweet tea from a carafe.’ All these and more appear in Kathryn Cristaldi’s gentle rhyming text and the mixed-media scenes created by Kristyna Litten showing the creatures preparing for their slumbers until antics over, peace and quiet finally descends upon the jungle.

Little ones will delight in the silly antics of the creatures, both those in the foreground of the illustrations and those lurking in the background (frolicking frogs for instance), unmentioned in the words. I wonder how many birds they can spot.

Parents, recite slowly and rhythmically, perhaps several times if you want a young child to join the animals in sleep: the first sharing will I suspect be spent poring excitedly over the pictures.