The Enormous Crocodile

Synopsis

The story takes place in Africa where an enormous, greedy crocodile is telling a smaller crocodile that he is going to eat children for his lunch. The smaller crocodile objects, because children taste "nasty and bitter" in his opinion compared to fish, and because of what happened the last time the larger crocodile tried to eat children. The larger crocodile leaves the river anyway, and announces his intention to Humpy Rumpy the Hippopotamus, Trunky the Elephant, Muggle-Wump the Monkey and the Roly-Poly Bird. The other animals insult him and hope that he will fail and will himself be killed and eaten, after which the crocodile briefly and unsuccessfully attacks Muggle-Wump and the Roly-Poly Bird.

First of all, the crocodile heads into a coconut tree forest, not far from a town and disguises himself as a small coconut tree with branches and coconuts, hoping to eat 2 children, Toto and Mary, but is exposed by Humpy Rumpy the Hippopotamus.

Next, the crocodile heads to a children's playground outside an ancient school and disguises himself as a see-saw, with the aid of a piece of wood, hoping to eat a whole class of children, but is exposed by Muggle-Wump the Monkey.

Then, the crocodile heads to a funfair and, when nobody is looking, he disguises himself as a wooden crocodile on a merry-go-round by sandwiching hismelf between a brown wooden lion and a fearsome yellow dragon, (with a red tongue sticking out of its mouth,) hoping to eat a young girl named Jill who wants to ride on him, but is exposed by the Roly-Poly Bird.

Last of all, the crocodile heads to a picnic place outside the town and disguises himself as a long, wooden four-legged bench, hoping to eat 4 children who are going out on a picnic together, but is exposed by Trunky the Elephant.

Following a brief confrontation, Trunky sentences the crocodile to death by swinging him round and round in the air by his tail before pushing him with his trunk, sending him flying into the sky, out of Earth, into Space, past the moon and past stars and planets. Earth soon becomes just a tiny dot miles below. Eventually, with the most tremendous BANG!, the crocodile crashes headlong into the sun where he is sizzled up like a sausage.

Style and Publication Date

The Enormous Crocodile is in the style of a picture book in contrast to Dahl's other picture books, illustrated by Quentin Blake. It was first published on 1 November 1978.

Home Media

On the 2005 Four Enchanting Stories by Roald Dahl DVD release, narration on the story was provided by Roger Blake, whilst on the accompanying VHS release, narration was made by Dave Benson Phillips and on the audio CD by Stephen Fry.

Relations to other Roald Dahl books