The Curious Lobster

Richard W Hatch's The Curious Lobster is a gentle, funny animal story for 7 year olds about a very old lobster who wants to see what dry land is like.

What happens

Mr. Lobster lives at the bottom of the Ocean, in a practically perfect house between two big rocks. He's sixty-eight years old, which is a great age for a lobster, and he's rather pleased with himself about it. He has one big problem though. He's curious about EVERYTHING, and the thing he's most curious about is the land.

His neighbour the sculpin thinks this is a terrible idea. The sculpin is very ugly and very dignified, and he's full of gloomy warnings. But Mr. Lobster rides the tide up the river anyway, and he meets Mr. Badger.

Mr. Badger steals every scene he's in. He's a joker who can't stay serious for a minute. On some days he's a badger and on other days he's a wallaby, because today the meadow is Australia (and you must take it very seriously). He hates fish but lives on them anyway, just to prove a point.

Their first outing on the grass goes badly. Mr. Lobster starts to dry out, and the only way back to the river is hanging on to Mr. Badger's tail with both claws. You can imagine how Mr. Badger feels about that!

A lot of the fun is in the misunderstandings. Mr. Lobster has never seen a tree, and at first he thinks it's an enormous creature with scales. He jumps into a rain puddle and comes out sneezing, furious that nobody had put salt in it.

The language is old-fashioned and a little bit grand, and that's part of the joke. The animals talk in long polite sentences while quite silly things happen to them. It would make a lovely read-aloud, with plenty of voices to put on.

If your reader is a bit of a worrier, there are a couple of tense moments when Mr. Lobster gets too dry. But nothing truly bad happens, and each scare ends with a laugh.

What to read next

If they're after another story where the animals of a countryside hill chatter away in their own grand voices, try Rabbit Hill. Everyone on the hill is waiting to find out whether the new Folks moving into the Big House will be planting Folks or not.