THE ALLIGATOR AND HIS UNCLE TOOTH

by Geoffrey Hayes ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 1, 1977

When Hayes begins with a family of alligators living in the hills--knitting, gardening, and staying indoors when it rains--you suspect that his is an arbitrary, capricious sort of whimsy. And so it proves, when Corduroy the youngest alligator goes off to work in a seaside town, where retired sailor Uncle Tooth regales him with tales of his seagoing adventures. Like many a spinner of sea stories Uncle Tooth lets slip some inconsistencies: early on a puffin friend he's saved from hostile pelicans nets him some perfectly negotiable jewels from the sea (they're the sparkle the full moon makes on the water--just one of Hayes' fanciful touches), but if it's that easy, why does another whole adventure depend on his quest for a pirate's jewels? And though an early quest to discover where the sky meets the sea ends with the questionable conclusion that great deeds are unimportant and he never should have left his dear friends, still the book ends with Corduroy and Uncle Tooth setting out once more on that very same quest. Such absence of rhyme or reason needn't sink an entertainment of real inventiveness or charm, but Uncle Tooth's little fish stories are hardly enough to keep this one going.

Pub Date: April 1, 1977

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Harper & Row

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1977

Categories: FICTION