I, Crocodile

Caldecott Honor illustrator Fred Marcellino's first foray into writing picture books is a satisfying success. The story is a poke in the eye of pomposity and the winds of fashion. The text sounds as though it might be spoken in a theater, with all its staged dignity and conflicting emotions.

The illustrations sprawl luxuriously across the page, or dangle two or three to the page. For all the silliness of their subject matter, they feel grand, like stills from an epic movie. They impart all the emotions of the story, suspect and otherwise, as well as easily transporting readers from the Nile River to 19th century Paris.