About the Author

Alison Lester is one of Australia s most popular children s authors and illustrators. She began illustrating children s books after she had her first child, and today has illustrated more than 25 books for children. Alison has won several awards for her writing and illustrating, including the 1989 CBC Honour Book Award for The Journey Home, and Best Designed Children s Book for Rosie Sips Spiders. When Frank Was Four reached number one in the bestseller list and was also a CBC Notable Book. Alison lives on a farmlet in rural Victoria with her husband and their three children.

Reviews

PreS-Gr 2 An Australian title that travels well. A group of seven children is shown doing quite ordinary things but each in his own unique way. On one two-page spread, six of the children are shown first eating, then getting dressed, playing, etc. The next spread features the seventh child. Children can try to guess which of the seven will be featured and what he or she will be doing, or they can tell what they would be doing, focusing on their own uniqueness. This is a simple and subtle presentation of how special each child is. It is refreshing to find a book affirming each child's individuality. And it does so with wit and humor based on surprise and incongruity. (Those alligators that Clive likes to eat are actually a brand of breakfast cereal.) The pages are well designed with large clean type. The softly colored pictures are reminiscent of John Burningham's in Would You Rather. . . (Crowell, 1978). Overall a quality job and a delight. Judith Gloyer, Milwaukee Public Library

For breakfast, Frank eats granola, Nicky has a banana, Ernie has porridge, but Clive . . . eats alligators! (Alligator Pops cereal, that is.) As this book unfolds, each of seven children turns out to do something a little differently from the rest. (Frank plays chess with his dog; Celeste has a pet rooster, etc.) Clive Eats Alligators is cute, but might have been more fun if it had been designed as a peek-a-boo book, perhaps geared toward younger readers. Lester underscores her point by making the children representative of different races, but her two nonwhite characters are so lightskinned as to be almost indistinguishable from their Caucasian counterparts. (25)