Goofy, playful, and mischievous Ruby is fully dimensional, as she has shown her bravery during the many hardships of her young life. An elephant glossary and Castelao’s charming, illustrated guide to elephant body language help immerse readers in Ruby’s world. The unexpected arrival of someone from Ruby’s past life on the savanna revives memories both warmly nostalgic and deeply traumatic. Ruby was born in an unspecified part of Africa, later ending up on display in the mall, where she met Ivan, Bob, and Julia. Luckily, she can confide in her Uncle Ivan, who is next door in Gorilla World, and Uncle Bob, the dog who lives nearby with human friend Julia. She’s apprehensive about her Tuskday, a rite of passage for young elephants when she’ll give a speech in front of the rest of the herd. In this follow-up to 2020’s The One and Only Bob, Ruby the elephant is still living at Wildworld Zoological Park and Sanctuary. In all, a basic, teeth-baring rendition of the old yum-yum-squish-crunch number. It's an uninspired plot, right up to the typically Dahl retribution-Trunky sends the croc flying through the air until he crashes into the hot hot sun and is 'sizzled up like a sausage.' It's also played out with typical Dahl gusto, which Blake makes a good show of enjoying-his crocodile's clever disguises are devilish fun. And so, each time that the Enormous Crocodile seems about to succeed with his scheme, one of the other animals bursts in and warns the children away. But the crocodile makes the mistake of announcing his 'secret plans and clever tricks' to Humpy-Rumpy the Hippopotamus, Trunky the Elephant, Muggle-Wump the Monkey, and the Roly-Poly Bird-all of whom denounce him as 'a horrid, greedy, grumptious brute,' 'a foul and filthy fiend,' and the like. I'm going to fill my hungry empty tummy/ With something yummy yummy yummy yummy!, So boasts the Enormous Crocodile, setting out in search of juicy little children to eat.

The hungry crocodile