The wonderful, witty narration by Craig Kelly and Helen Lederer plus original music and sound effects bring this jungle adventure to life. The illustrations are big and bold and bright and atmospheric.

“It was hot in the deep green jungle when Crocodile leapt from the river. He sniffed and snarled, growled and snapped. The jungle shook and quivered.”

Buy Here Comes the Crocodile

Wonderful for school and festival events and making its inaugural appearance at the Edinburgh festival, this book is the snazziest, snappiest title around. You can also visit the Little Tiger Website and click ‘Summer Fun Link’ for special activities on this book.

Here’s a short extract:

Tremble with fear, Crocodile’s near.

He’s sneaking by, with a glint in his eye,

Slyly disguised as the trunk of a tree,

Ready to SNATCH you and eat you for tea!

Buy Click Clack Crocodile’s Back

This is a READY STEADY READ romp of a book with lots of tempting extras to engage children with the fun story offering: Activity pages, Reusable reward stickers and Reading notes for parents and teachers. Perfect for Key Stage 1.

Here’s a short extract:
“Box his ears,” shouts Littlest Rabbt.
“Certainly not.  Boxing ears doesn’t solve problems,” says Badger firmly.
“Oh,” says Littlest Rabbit, disappointed, “then bop his nose.”

Buy The Nutty Nut Chase

And though I had lots of fun myself, it’s always nice to hear that the children have enjoyed themselves too!

Here’s what one of them wrote after my visit:

“The author Kathryn White visited our school and read us the story ‘Click, Clack, Crocodiles back’. She used puppets and we made masks to retell the story in class. Kathryn white signed my book and now I can read it at home with my family.”

And Tracy Riddell, one of the teachers at Norwood Green, was kind enough to say:

“As part of our exciting writing week we organised for the author Kathryn White to visit our school. Through the use of puppets and mask making Kathryn inspired our children to write their own stories. The children and staff enthusiastically joined in with the retelling of the story and loved asking Kathryn questions about her books.”

I love doing school events as it gives me a chance to help children learn and for me to see how they react to my books. If you’re interested in me coming to your school, be sure to check out my Schools page.

The first book in the series is free and the follow ups are great to for a full colour library on subjects from Dinosaurs to the Solar system.

Keep your eyes open for them as they’re great to dip into when you haven’t found that perfect fiction book to read.

Then I’ll be scooting up to London to pay a special visit to Norwood Green Infant School. Nearly 300 pupils will be there, so it’s going to be pretty manic. Can you imagine 300 elephants, zebras, flamingos and monkeys going wild in the classroom? Uh! Just as well CC the crocodile is coming with me to keep a hungry eye on things.

Lots of pics on their way.

And here’s a thought. Why don’t you write your own book for World Book Day? The book can be 2 pages long or 200. So to get the old imagination flowing, I’m going to put down a few suggestions. You can pick the words up, play with them and use them in any order you want, or not, perhaps they might just spark off your own characters and exciting tales. So go for it and on world book day, share your special story with your friends.

Here’re some words to get you started.

Characters
Lost Book. (Will it find its way back to its owner? What does it hide inside? Does it have a secret?)

Poppy’s Pond. Poppy and her friends build a garden pond. After it’s finished, they decide to go out the next morning and buy some fish to put into it. But what does Poppy discover has moved into her pond overnight?

Bothersome Boris.

Betty has discovered that although her little brother looks like an angel with big blue eyes and wild curly hair, he behaves like a demon. What does Boris do to drive Betty up the wall? Do you have a brother or sister that bothers you? What do they do? And how do you deal with it? Maybe you can write about Betty?

Settings
A door in the wall.

There is a door in old Mrs Haggarty’s garden wall. It should lead to her back garden, but if you open it and step through, will it take you somewhere else. What will you see? Who will you meet?

You’ve found a sandcastle that never washes away with the tide out into the sea. Who lives there?

So get writing, World Book Day is here!

Good luck.

A wonderful teacher, Miss Ruffle (who was completely unruffled by the whole experience) was a great sport and really brought the show to life by donning the pink flamingo hat, banana jacket, and shoe shuffling to Tuxedo Junction.

CC my crocodile puppet spent the day tormenting the children by chomping on pigtails and nibbling ears. He seems to get more and more uncontrollable as the year goes on. I’ll have to send him to our local zoo or even worse, leave him in my travel suitcase until he calms down.

Click on the pictures to make them bigger:

Mid morning, I had the chance of getting nursery to try out my new puppet book CHEESE HUNT with me. The children were so young yet they memorised the chorus no problem and chuckled as mouse munched his way from page to page.

With year 2s, I read The Hunt, for a multi-cultural session and the class followed up with some great work on festival masks and the characters in my story.

Story in a Shoebox!

Then I had the pleasure of judging the Story in a Shoebox competition. Boy that was tough. Too many great designs from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, where a wonderful cut-out of a wardrobe was linked to a wire and lit up every time the door was opened, to a bright, basic, big, red cage with a fluffy lion peering out from inside for Dear Zoo.

But the overall winner for me was a wonderful Charlie and Lola box. Both characters had been cut out and were sitting at a kitchen table with lots of interesting homey things around them, the identifiable Lauren Child designs in the background and the clincher was – the tiny home-made books set neatly on shelves.

All in all a great day and it was sad to say goodbye to everyone at the end.

Have a go yourself

But story in a shoebox is a fantastic idea. You should really try and make one some time, maybe even get your friends to do design one too and guess what the story in the box is about. I’d love to see photos of a story box that you’ve made yourself. I’d whizz the pics up in my gallery for all to enjoy.

It’s just a matter of getting an old shoebox, finding your favourite story and making a special scene that depicts that tale.

Well, for all you local readers there is a competition coming out in the Journal Newspaper. It will be published on the 17th September and the first correct answer out of the bag wins signed copies of Here Comes the Crocodile and Click Clack Crocodile’s Back!

Question is – What is the most dangerous creature known to man?

Now, I have placed a list of the top seven, so it’s a matter of finding the critter right at the top of the list. Naughty brothers/sisters or rotten teachers do not count, nor spiders, as ugly or scary as they are.

Now I remember a scary experience I had with one of the creatures on my list: the adder.

When my second daughter Emily was a bright-eyed new baby, we took her for a walk.

She was tiny, rolled up in a little papoose and she slept like an angel as we wandered through the woods in Northumberland.

It was warm and sunny and after a while we decided to rest up. So I took off the papoose with baby Emily snoozing merrily away and placed it on the ground.

I stood thinking about how lovely the views were.

But David, my husband, wasn’t looking at the views. David was silently looking down at an adder curled up on a stone, only inches from where Emily slept.

David said nothing to me, but within a second, he’d snapped up the papoose and pointed at the adder.

Heart stopping moment!

It camouflaged so well into the rock, I could barely see it.

Thankfully, the adder must have had a busy day too as it had remained asleep, curled up in the sun and uninterested in the saga that had just taken place.

So, are snakes the most dangerous creatures known to man, or is it one of the other beasts on my list? If you’re from the South West of England, look out for this competition in your local papers for your chance to win!

So a big thank you to Julia Donaldson for being such fantastic fun.

Julia had all the children hiding under tables, behind chairs and any mum, dad, grandma or granddad handily available to give cover from her roaring, sneaking, snarling and prowling hunt. Click clack, Crocodile’s Back and Croc really made the show go with a bang.

Being in Edinburgh there’s lots to see, so after all of our hard work, we headed off to see The Umbrella Birds. No, not real Umbrella birds, well, I suppose they were real, but they weren’t birds, they were a very funny troupe of talented comedians doing some funny scenes on stage set outside of a ladies changing room.

Then wow, we were lucky enough to see the Tao Drummers and they knocked my socks off. Actually, I wasn’t wearing any socks, so my sandals came off instead and my feet tap, tap, tapped to the fantastic beat of the amazing drums, dance and acrobatics.

After the workshop fun, me, David and CC headed for the highlands and no, it didn’t rain, rain, rain, the sun shone for most of the time as we searched for the Loch Ness monster. Even CC was brave enough to dip his toes into the water.

Then after a brisk, sunny shower I could have sworn I saw a pot of gold hanging on the end of this beautiful rainbow I managed to click before it magically disappeared. Darn it, didn’t find the end of the rainbow in time to snatch up the gold, but the rainbow is pretty lovely and Edinburgh was fantastic too.

Keep reading.