The huge crocodile
The giant crocodile (original title: The Enormous Crocodile ) is a children's book by Roald Dahl , which was published in 1978. It is Roald Dahl's first picture book for younger children and the first of his books to be illustrated by Quentin Blake .
content
The huge crocodile announces that today a child wants to eat it as a special delicacy. The other crocodiles say it is a terrible act, but the huge crocodile cannot be dissuaded. It ambushes children and tries to catch them using various camouflages and tricks. Each time a different animal intervenes and saves the children. Finally, an elephant throws the huge crocodile so high into the air that it flies up to the sun.
Publication history and reception
For his first picture book, Roald Dahl initially had difficulties finding a suitable illustrator. The collaboration with Quentin Blake started only hesitantly. Ultimately, The Giant Crocodile was so successful and the illustrations so praised that from then on Blake not only illustrated all of Dahl's other children's books, but also created new illustrations for all subsequent editions of his earlier children's books.
The first edition of the book was published in 1978 by the American publisher Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. , the first British edition in the same year by Jonathan Cape . Since then it has appeared in numerous editions; it is currently published by Puffin Books . The first German edition in a translation by Sybil Countess Schönfeldt was published by Rowohlt Verlag .
Like many of Roald Dahl's books, The Giant Crocodile was not only praised for its fluency and puns, but also for its sometimes brutal cynicism, and complaints against the book were often filed in American libraries.
expenditure
- German version
- Roald Dahl: The huge crocodile. Translated from the English by Sybil Countess Schönfeldt. Reinbek, Rowohlt 1978, ISBN 3-498-01227-4 .
- Original edition
- Roald Dahl: The Enormous Crocodile. Jonathan Cape, London 1978, ISBN 0224046845 .
- Roald Dahl: The Enormous Crocodile. Puffin, London 2009, ISBN 978-0142414538 .
- Audio books (english)
- Roald Dahl: The Enormous Crocodile. Read by Roald Dahl. New edition. HarperCollins, New York 2007, ISBN 0007158955 .
- Roald Dahl: The Enormous Crocodile. Read by Stephen Fry . Puffin, London 2010, ISBN 978-0141047911 .
Individual evidence
- ^ Donald Sturrock: Storyteller: The Authorized Biography of Roald Dahl. London, HarperPress 2010, ISBN 978-0007254767 , p. 525.
- ↑ Anita Silvey (Ed.): Children's Books and Their Creators. Houghton Mifflin 1995, ISBN 0395653800 , p. 62.
- ^ Jonathon Green: The Encyclopedia of Censorship. New York 1990, ISBN 0816015945 , p. 139.