My Dad’s Got an Alligator

Jeremy Strong's My Dad's Got an Alligator is a very funny family story for 8 year olds, told by a boy called Nicholas whose dad has brought an alligator home from work.

What happens

A man at the paper mill couldn't keep it any more, so Dad volunteered. It is nearly as long as the sofa. Dad insists it is a vegetarian.

Mum does not believe a word of that. She cannot stand anything with a lot of teeth. First she locks herself in the bedroom. Then she comes back down with one of Granny's walking sticks and a barbecue fork tied to the end of it.

The alligator eats two cushions off the sofa and the TV remote. Now the channel changes every time it snaps its jaws shut.

It also opens its tins of dog food with its teeth, which puts dog food on the kitchen floor, the walls and the ceiling. Mum decides Dad is cleaning that up. Dad has never cleaned anything in his life.

Then there's the name. Dad wants Norman. Mum suggests Armageddon. Nicholas comes up with Crunchbag, and Dad instantly says he was thinking exactly that.

The voice is the whole point of this one. Nicholas tells you everything in short bursts, half exasperated and half thrilled, and his asides are funnier than the plot. (He is very firm that he will never comb three straggly strands over a bald patch the way the man next door does.)

There is one properly honest moment in among the silliness. Nicholas says his dad can make you laugh so much you think you'll die, and that it's horrible when you can't stop laughing and you know something serious is going on. Plenty of children will recognise that feeling.

Granny is nearly deaf and answers a completely different question from the one you asked. Check she's all right during the karaoke and she'll tell you it's in the top drawer under her karate tunic.

Mum and Dad do row, more than once, and the rows are proper ones before everything turns funny again. They make up just as loudly, usually with a song. Nothing here is frightening, but it is a noisy household and the book never pretends otherwise.

This is chaotic rather than cosy. Not much is at stake. Somebody is simply always doing something stupid, and for the right child that is the entire appeal.

What to read next

Granny gets a book to herself later on. In My Granny's Great Escape she has fallen for a man next door and keeps asking Nicholas, who would rather sink into the floor, whether the chap fancies her back.