THE UNDERGROUND GATORS
by Tina Casey and illustrated by Lynn Munsinger
Casey offers a free-association reply to a question she heard many times as an employee of New York’s Department of Environmental Protection. Are there alligators in the sewers? Of course! Pizzas are round so that the gators can get them into the manholes. The Brooklyn Bridge is strung with cables so they’ll have a place to hang their laundry. They go to school in the summer, so that’s where all the teachers go, too. New York isn’t the only place they live, either; keep your eyes open and you could spot them in your town. In typically busy scenes Munsinger crowds plenty of gently smiling reptiles in human dress—chowing down on hot dogs, painting school buses and bedrooms orange (not yellow, as the text has it) and stealing single socks from the wash for hand puppets. The afterword supplies an enlightening, if less fanciful, look at the urban myth. Fun enough, in an ephemeral sort of way. (Picture book. 6-8)