Alligator Baby

Alligator Baby

By: Robert Munsch

Grades: Kindergarten (through 3^rd Grade)

Have your parents ever had a new baby?  Have you ever felt like this new baby was a stranger to you and nothing like you?  Have you ever wondered where your parents brought your baby brother or sister home from?  In Alligator Baby by Robert Munsch, we learn about where Kristen’s new baby brother came from and how it wasn’t easy finding her new brother once he was mixed up at the zoo.

Alligator Baby is a story about a young girl named Kristen who is anxiously waiting for her parents to bring her new baby brother home even though the parents got lost and ended up having the baby in the zoo.  Once they come home, Kristen’s parents go to introduce her to her new baby brother, but her brother ends up being an alligator baby.  The parents put the baby alligator in the fish tank and went back to the zoo to get their baby.  However, instead of Kristen’s baby brother, her parents brought home a baby seal.  They then returned to the zoo a again and instead of bringing home a baby boy they brought home a baby gorilla.  Kristen then decided to take this into her own hands since her parents were having such a hard time finding her baby brother.  Kristen hopped on her bicycle and went to the zoo herself.  Kristen looked around the zoo in search of her brother but she could not find him.  Then she heard a crying baby and she knew that had to be her baby brother.  Kristen found her brother in the arms of a gorilla that was reluctant to give him to her until the baby boy bit the gorilla on the nose.  Kristen was then able to bring her baby brother home.  Her parents wondered what they were going to do with all the baby animals.  The next thing they knew, all of the parent animals from the zoo came bursting into their house and they were reunited with all of their own babies.

This is would be a great book to have in a classroom library because many students can relate to it in a funny far-fetched kind of way.  Many students will be in school and their parents will have a new baby.  Some students may thoroughly enjoy that they will be an older sibling and others will not be happy at all.  This book puts a funny twist on parents bringing home a new baby.  All of the babies in this story ended up being baby animals until the very end.  A new baby may feel like a stranger to some of your students.  They may not think they can relate to their new brother or sister at all and many of them may not even been in contact with a baby before.  However, in the end they would do anything for their new baby brother or sister.  This is a great book to illustrate the concept that at first you may not like your new sibling and they may feel like a stranger to you but in the end you would do anything for them and you are happy that they are there. 

This book would be a great example to show early childhood students the idea that not all stories really happened.  In real life, parents do not have babies at the zoo and mix the babies up with animals.  Students need to learn how to distinguish what is real and what is make believe.  This book does this fabulously because it incorporates real people in a real-life setting but the plot is not real.  This book also would be a great way to illustrate dialogue and onomatopoeia.  For instance, when Robert Munsch is talking about the car driving fast he writes, “Varoooooommmmmm” and also, when he is illustrating Kristen or her parents knocking on the door he writes “Blam, blam, blam, blam”.

The ELA MA Curriculum Frameworks that this book incorporates are R.3.08.a.  Identify dialogue as words spoken by characters (usually enclosed in quotation marks) and explain what dialogue adds to a particular story or poem, and W.1.03.a.  Write poems, descriptions, and stories in which figurative language and the sounds of words (e.g. alliteration, onomatopoeia, rhyme) are key elements.