The Enormous Crocodile is a short story by Roald Dahl.
The enormous crocodile lives in the biggest, brownest, muddiest river in Africa .
Synopsis
One day an enormous crocodile leaves the big, brown, muddy river to search for little children to eat, ignoring the advise of the not so big one who says that he'll fail and goes tramping through the jungle telling Humpy Rumpy the Hippopotamus, Trunky the Elephant, Muggle-Wump the Monkey and the Roly-Poly Bird all about his secret plans and clever tricks. The animals tell him that it is a horrible thing to do but he tries to use his "clever tricks" to eat the tasty children nonetheless. However, every time he tries, the animals of the jungle save the children and the crocodile's clever tricks are wasted. Later on, Trunky the Elephant kills the crocodile by swinging him round and round in the air by his tail, slowly at first, and then a little faster and then a lot faster, and then very fast indeed. Finally, Trunky lets go of the crocodile and he flies into the sky, out of Earth's atmosphere and into Outer Space. He whizzes past the moon, and then he whizzes past stars and planets before crashing headlong into the sun, where he gets burned up.
Style and publication date
It is in the style of a picture book in contrast to Dahl's other books, illustrated by Quentin Blake. It was first published in 1978.
ISBN
ISBN 0-7857-0812-X (library binding, 2002) ISBN 0-375-91046-8 (library binding, 2000) ISBN 0-375-81046-3 (hardcover, 2000) ISBN 0-224-04684-5 (hardcover, 1999) ISBN 0-224-01579-6 (hardcover, 1978) ISBN 0-14-230245-7 (paperback, 2003) ISBN 0-14-036556-7 (paperback, 2002) ISBN 0-14-131152-5 (paperback, 2001) ISBN 0-14-056822-0 (paperback, 2001) ISBN 0-14-130971-7 (paperback, 2000) ISBN 0-14-050342-0 (paperback, 1980)
