The Enormous Crocodile (first published on 1 November 1978) is a British children's story, written by British author Roald Dahl and illustrated by Quentin Blake. A picture book written for younger readers than Dahl's other works, the story tells of a hungry crocodile who aims to eat human children via using various, not-quite-impenetrable disguises.[1]
The story begins in Africa in a large, deep, muddy river, where the big crocodile (the title character) is telling a slightly smaller crocodile, called the "not-so-big one", that he wants to leave his dirty home behind and eat some real human children for his lunch. The small crocodile objects, because real children taste "tough and chewy and nasty and bitter" in his opinion compared to real fish, and because of what happened the very last time the large crocodile ever tried to eat real human children. The bigger crocodile leaves the big, deep, muddyriver anyway, and announces his intention to first visit Humpy-Rumpy the hippopotamus on the river bank, then Trunky the elephant in the jungle, then Muggle Wump the monkey, and finally Roly-Poly Bird in his orange tree. Humpy-Rumpy suspects he's "going to do something horrid." Grinning, the big crocodile responds: "I'm going to fill my hungry empty tummy with something yummy yummy yummy yummy!". The four jungle animals are all feeling horrified and disgusted with the big crocodile, thereby insulting him on the spot, hoping that he will fail miserably and will himself be killed permanently, after which the reptile himself briefly and unsuccessfully attacks first Muggle-Wump the Monkey in his tree (filled with nuts) and Roly Poly Bird himself in his (newly-built) nest.
First of all, the big crocodile walks over to a coconut tree forest, not far away from an African town, where he cleverly disguises himself as a small coconut tree using several fallen tree branches as well as several fallen coconuts, hoping to eat Toto and Mary, a brother and a sister who happen to live in the town itself, but he is annoyingly caught by Humpy-Rumpy the Hippopotamus from the muddy river bank, who catches the big crocodile with his big head, and sends him "tumbling and skidding over the ground".
Words spoken by the crocodile in the book, "I'm going to fill my hungry empty tummy with something yummy yummy yummy yummy!", displayed in the Dahl sculpture in Cardiff
Next, the big crocodile walks to a children's playground located outside an old school. Using only an abandoned tree branch, (referred to as "a large piece of wood"), the cheeky crocodile disguises himself as a "see-saw", hoping to eat an entire class of children who want to ride on what they think is the "new see-saw" itself, but, despite the school children's teacher telling the children themselves that it is "a rather knobbly sort of a see-saw", he is just disturbed on the spot by Muggle-Wump the Monkey, who tells the whole class of children to "run, run, run" and that the big crocodile is not really a real see-saw and that he just wants to eat them up.
Later on, the big crocodile creeps over to a busy funfair where he eventually sees a "big roundabout", operated only by a human man who he does not at all know. When nobody is nearby, the crocodile himself quickly puts himself between a brown lion and a yellow dragon (with a red tongue sticking out of its mouth) hoping to eat a young girl called Jill who wants to ride on him, but is confronted by Roly-Poly Bird from the jungle, who tells Jill and the children that the big crocodile himself is real and not wooden, hence why he came "from the river" and that he wants to eat them up.
Refusing to give up on his seemingly impossible task, the big crocodile finally goes to "the picnic place" located in a tropical woodland just outside the town which has trees and bushes all around it. When nobody is looking, however, the crocodile picks up a bunch of beautiful coloured flowers with his front legs, and then he arranges it on top of one of the tables in the area. From exactly the same table, the (now very hungry) crocodile sneakily takes away one of the place's long benches and hides the long bench itself in one of the many clumps of bushes in the area before disguising himself as a wooden four-legged bench using all four of his stiff legs, hoping to eat four children, ("two boys and two girls") who are all going out "on a picnic together", but is annoyingly discovered by Trunky the Elephant.
With a chance to save the day, Trunky the Elephant marches through the jungle into the Picnic Place. Once Trunky is standing beside the table with the bunch of coloured flowers on top of it, he crossly picks the big crocodile himself up by his tail using his trunk before telling him that he, Roly-Poly Bird, Humpy-Rumpy and Muggle-Wump have "all had quite enough of (his) clever tricks". Then, Trunky swings the big crocodile around in the air by his tail, slowly at first, then a bit faster, then a lot faster, and finally very fast, before eventually throwing him into the sky with his trunk. The dizzy enormous crocodile flies diagonally through Earth's stratosphere, and through the Universe. The crocodile zooms past the Moon, past all the other planets, and finally past the many twinkling stars. The story ends as, "with the most tremendous bang", the flying Enormous Crocodile crashes headfirst into the "hot hot Sun" in the middle of the Solar System, where he becomes "sizzled up like a sausage" right after impact, killing him "once and for all".
2023 Revisions
In February 2023, Puffin Books, a division of Penguin Books, announced they would be re-writing portions of many of Roald Dahl's children's novels, changing the language to, in the publisher's words, "ensure that it can continue to be enjoyed by young readers of all ages today".[2] At least five changes were made in The Enormous Crocodile (1978), including permanently deleting the word fat and changing boys and girls to just children.[3][4]
Style and publication date
Crocodile bench and chair sculpture overlooking Cardiff Bay depicting The Enormous Crocodile
The Enormous Crocodile is in the style of a picture book in contrast to Roald Dahl's other story books, illustrated by Quentin Blake. It was published on 1 November 1978.
Connections to other Roald Dahl Stories
Muggle-Wump the monkey also appears in The Twits in which he is accompanied by a whole family of Muggle-Wumps. A monkey which looks like Blake's illustration of exactly the same character also appears in The Giraffe and the Pelly and Me.
The Roly-Poly Bird makes a surprising appearance in The Twits and he can also be seen in Dirty Beasts.
A recipe outlining how to make your own edible Enormous Crocodile appears in Roald Dahl's Revolting Recipes.
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