Shake Your Rump

"I'll wiggle my rump with a bump, bump, bump, and smash your house!"

Ok folks, this one made me laugh out loud!  The Three Little Gators by Helen Ketteman is a very entertaining retelling of the classic tale The Three Little Pigs.  In The Three Little Gators, Mama Gator sends her three little gators out to make their mark in the wild swampland of East Texas.  But before they depart, she warns them to build sturdy houses to protect themselves from the notorious Big-bottom Boar, who would love nothing more than to make a tasty snack out of little gators.  So each little gator sets out to build his new home.  The First Gator wisely chooses to build his house out of rocks, but his two brothers think rocks are too heavy and require too much work, so they continue on to build houses of their own using sticks and sand.  Unfortunately, sticks and sand are no match for the Big-bottomed Boar, who wiggles his "rump with a bump, bump, bump," and smashes the houses down.  The Second and Third Gator "scramble through the brambles" "faster than a fox after a muskrat" straight to the home of First Gator.  Although the Big-bottomed Boar "wiggled and bumped, and waggled and thumped," he couldn't knock down the rock house.  Never one to miss out on the chance for a tasty snack, the Big-bottom Boar attempts to enter the rock house through the chimney, and receives a nice set of grill marks on his rear end as a souvenir.

From the silly catchphrase to the bold illustrations, The Three Little Gators kept us smiling from beginning to end.  We highly recommend this new humorous twist on an old classic.