Trafford Publishing: Crocket Dile and Baby Tiger's Bubble Trouble

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Crocket Dile and Baby Tiger's Bubble Trouble

by Gloria Dorworth

54 pages; quality trade paperback (softcover); catalogue #00-0202; ISBN 1-55212-536-X; US$12.00, C$13.50, EUR10.00, £7.00

A humorous tale in which two dissimilar young animals discover friendship through understanding and forgiveness. They join forces and unwittingly create havoc with baby crocodiles and a bubble bath for their long-suffering parents.

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About the book      About the author      Sample excerpts      Review      Catalogue info

About the Book

This is a tale of two seemingly dissimilar animals who join forces against their parents in a lively caper involving baby crocodiles and a bubble bath.
At first glance Crocket Dile is a borderline juvenile delinquent who deserves all he gets. However, with the understanding of a kindly policeman we discover that Crocket Dile is someone with whom children relate.
Friendless, a recent immigrant, and ousted by his three baby brother's from his mother's affection, Crocket Dile attempts to entertain himself on a school holiday.
That he does this by visiting Baby Tiger's Block Parent home while the family is absent causes a series of mishaps children love. He traipses in pancake batter in his Nikes, blocks a sink and shower so that they overflow, and finally falls asleep in an overflowing bubble bath.
The ensuing results are discovered by the Tiger family upon their return from the Medical Centre.
Baby Tiger, a spoiled youngster from a first generation family, tries to rectify events which result from Crocket Dile's havoc by calling '911'.
That's when the fun really begins.

Review

This interesting and captivating story will appeal to smaller children who can listen to each chapter as a continuing bed-timer story. The line drawings will intrigue little ones: what is happening, what will happen, what is the character imagining?
Equally, Crocket Dile and Baby Tiger's Bubble Trouble will affect children old enough to read it by themselves with its "with-it" dialogue and present-day protagonists and their social problems
As a retired educator and grandmother I enjoyed reading it to and with my three year old grandchildren, who in turn were entranced.
Lorraine E. Travis
Principal, Retired

About the Author

Gloria Dorworth was born in London, England and arrived in Alberta, Canada in 1958. She spent sixteen years there, raised a family, obtained B. Ed. and M. Ed. degrees from the University of Alberta and taught in both rural and urban schools. Her special area of focus was the teaching of reading and related language skills.
Upon moving to Victoria, B C. Gloria taught primary grades and E. S. L. classes. She wove fantasy into her lessons through telling her own stories. She also wrote and produced plays for school drama and puppet clubs.
Now living on Salt Spring Island with her husband Charles, an avid nature enthusiast, Gloria has found time to do what parents, colleagues and her grand daughters, Chelsea and Alexandra, have long advised her to do: to write, illustrate and publish her latest inventions.

Sample Excerpts

Excerpt #1
      He left the tap running and a face cloth in the sink, which blocked the overflow outlet. He went to find another bathroom.
      Upstairs he found Father Tiger's bathroom. It had a big shower. Crocket Dile turned on the shower and squeezed Father's shower gel all over the floor of the shower. It lathered up into big bubbles.
      Stuffing a big bath towel over the drain stopped the water from running away and Crocket Dile slithered around in the bubbles. but after five minutes he grew tired of the game so he left the shower with the water still running and went into Mother Tiger's bathroom.
      "Cool," said Crocket Dile as he looked at the great big Jacuzzi bathtub. He went and locked the door. Then he filled the tub to the top, poured in a whole bottle of bubble bath, climbed in, and turned on the jets.
      "Radical!" He yelled. "This is the life!"
      Crocket Dile amused himself for a while by turning the jets on and off. The tub was soon full of bubbles and the bathroom grew very warm.
      Leaving the taps and jets running Crocket Dile snuggled down in the water and fell fast asleep.

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Excerpt #2
      Crocket Dile giggled. His mother spoke funny too. Sometimes, when she picked him up after soccer the other kids laughed when they heard her. He always felt embarrassed and a little bit ashamed of her. Then he didn't like himself.
      As if he had read his mind Jake said, "It isn't easy when you come to live in a new country is it?"
      "How did you know that?" asked Crocket Dile.
      Jake said, "I got teased a lot when I first came to Canada. The kids called me 'Limey' and they always sniggered behind my mom's back when she spoke. One day I punched a kid who said my mom was a stuck up Brit."
      Crocket Dile was amazed. Here was a grown up who knew how he felt. He asked, "Did you ever get left out of games too when you went to school?"
      "All the time! At recess I even hid in the washroom so that I didn't have to go outside! At night I used to cry myself to sleep because I was so sad that no one wanted to be my friend."
      "And when you ate your lunch did the other kids look in your lunch kit and say, 'Yuck! You eat funny looking stuff?'"

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Excerpt #3
      For a while the babies had a lovely time and the two boys made them laugh by putting their chocolate covered faces in the water and blowing bubbles.
      Then of course it seemed a good idea to pour in some of Mother Tiger's bubble bath.
      That led to seeing how big the bubbles could grow by turning up the jets.
      Baby Tiger leaned forward to catch a very large bubble when he toppled in on top of the baby crocodiles.
      The baby crocodiles didn't like the soap in their mouths so they climbed on top of Baby Tiger to get out.
      Unfortunately they had very sharp claws and they dug them into Baby Tiger's back.
      Baby Tiger let out a small tiger roar and Crocket Dile jumped into the bathtub to help.
      The noise coming from the bathroom brought Father Tiger, followed by Jake and the fire chief, running up the stairs.
      Father Tiger went into the bathroom but could not see because ot the steam. He tripped over a little crocodile that was just inside the doorway.

Former teacher takes storytime tales to create kids' book
By GAIL SJUBERGE
Driftwood Staff

    Those not lucky enough to be either Gloria Dorworth's grandchildren or one of her primary-aged students in 38 years of teaching can at least get a sense of the Salt Spring woman through her first published children's book.
    A charming "bedtime" story for all ages, or a 54-page read-alone for ages six to 10, Crocket Diles and Baby Tiger's Bubble Trouble is an entertaining romp through a day i the life of a young crocodile and tiger, both mischievous in their own ways.
    We're introduced to Baby Tiger as he's insisting his parents get out of bed at 6 a.m. to make him pancakes for breakfast.
    Crocket Dile first grabs our attention when he throws blocks at Baby Tiger in a doctor's waiting-room dispute.
    The two families' lives become further entwined when Crocket Dile breaks into the Tiger' home, Goldilocks-style, and wreaks havoc with the middle-class family's possessions. In the case the jacuzzi and bubble bath make a particularly formidable combination.
    Kids find the story absolutely side-splitting, as characters trip and tumble and bonk their heads - and one little crocodile even slips into the toilet, that most giggle-inducing of household fixtures.
    But the story is not all merriment and mayhem. Dorworth has subtly injected current social issues into the hilarious scenario. She raises the difficulties experienced by immigrant families, or by older children with younger siblings dominating their mother's attention, and ponders the best remedial methods for misbehaving alligators or spoiled little tigers.
    As a teacher, Dorworth gained keen insight into the emotional lives of young children, especially from working with them in small groups in the learning assistance and English as a Second Language realms.
    She also found that extremely bright children often found themselves in trouble or had language-learning problems.
    In Dorworth's tale, Crocket Dile appears headed for a youth detention centre after his delinquent episode at the Tigers' home, but a kindly police officer takes him under his wing instead. "The idea is to create a sense of trust," says the author.
    We find out about Crocket Dile's troubles at that point, and then witness the igniting of true friendship between him and Baby Tiger.
    It's obvious through Dorworth's characters that she knows kids from head to toe, as well as the demands of modern parenting. The story's inclusion of a trip to the fast-food mecca called Crater's, which tempts kids with its Lava Lizard's Lair and Lava Loot toys, will have parents shivering with queasy memories.
    Storytime was always the pot of gold at the end of a rainbow in Dorworth's classes, and she tried to include her children's ideas in creating rich narrative worlds.
    The same goes for grandchildren Chelsea and Alexandra, with whom the Crocket Dile and Baby Tiger story first germinated. They jointly decided to have Crocket Dile cause his devastation in the bathroom, for example.
    "It sort of grew every night," recalls Dorworth. "As time went on they said, 'Why don't you write it down for us?'"
    So she borrowed the Goldilocks concept, and also followed fairy-tale form by using layered meanings.
    Dorworth also asked herself, "What if you went to the situation before the story began, and rearranged it a little bit?"
    So the bears grew stripes and became tiers, Goldilocks turned into a crocodile, and readers got some background information and better follow-through than simply having the naughty character run away screaming. (Dorworth learned from teaching that alligators and crocodiles are a big hit with kids.)
    A lifetime with children's literature also taught Dorworth that parents must enjoy the books they read to their kids, so she kept the adult entertainment factor in mind when she wrote her first book.
    She credits her parents for igniting her literary passion, noting that while they were not educated, her mother had a flair for words and her father still loves finding the perfect, often uncommon, word for almost every circumstance.
    A young Dorworth was a prolific writer, and many years later her pupils would follow suit. Her colleagues would implore her to reveal how she managed to get her students writing so much in grades 1-2. Crucial to the scheme, she reflects, "is creating an atmosphere of excitement so they can't wait to write."
    Rather than endure the highs and lows of trying to find a publisher for her manuscript, Dorworth opted to try Trafford Publishing, where the book is produced "on-demand" by that company, and some marketing services are offered, including a website at www.trafford.com
    Dorworth also dove into the illustration side of things with Crocket Dile and Baby Tiger's Bubble Trouble, and credits her art teacher Val Konig for helping ensure she could fulfill the visual parts of the project as well. The illustrations often highlight some of the story's funnier moments.
    Dorworth was born in London in 1935, and moved to Alberta in 1958, where she was a rural and urban schoolteacher. She then relocated to Victoria and taught there for 20 years before moving to Salt Spring with her husband Charles four years ago.
    With warmth and a wry sense of humour spilling into much of her conversation, it wouldn't be possible to forget Dorworth once you've met her. Given half a chance she might even be a tiny bit mischievous like her young protagonists.
    And where does she get so much energy to pursue a writing career, among other bobbies, after a full teaching career?
    "I think the truth of it is that I've never grown up," she confesses.
    Crocket Dile and Baby Tiger's Bubble Trouble is for sale in local bookstores, whose owners have been very supportive, through the Trafford Publishing website and from the Anglican Diocese in Victoria.

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Catalogue Information