There's An Alligator Under My Bed

The picture book There's An Alligator Under My Bed is both written and illustrated by Mercer Mayer. The target audience is early elementary school children, both girls and boys.

-Rating: Four out of Five Stars ****

-Summary: An alligator lives under a small boy's bed and he decides he wants to get the alligator out from under his bed. He makes a trail of food from his bed to the garage for the alligator to follow. Once it makes it all the way to the garage, after following the snacks the boy has left out, he locks him up so he won't have to worry about it anymore.

Many children go through the fear of having something living under their bed at an early age, and it can be frightening. This book connects to young readers in a more light-hearted and humorous way about having the fear of something "getting" you as you crawl under the covers at nighttime. As a reader, I connected with this idea and it brought me back to my childhood paranoia and having my parents peek under the bed to make sure nothing was there and I feel a lot of children can connect with this idea which can lead to children liking the book. The illustrations are well thought out and drawn. All the pictures are rendered in watercolor. I can clearly make out what is going on without even reading the text below the pictures. Children who cannot read yet and just want to enjoy the pictures would still be able to understand the idea behind the story. The illustrations range from the parents looking under the bed to the boy making the food trail for the alligator to follow. This allows the books to be appealing to readers and non-readers of an early age.

This book can be incorporated into the classroom as a writing activity where students can write and illustrate something they fear. It can be used as an outlet for students to express something they fear and can then be talked about within a class setting to address those fears. The only hesitation I would have is that maybe not all students would feel comfortable talking about something they are afraid of in front of all their peers. This lesson would be situational in that I would have to first get to know the class to determine if there are any problems between students that would put them in a position to be uncomfortable discussing such topics within a classroom setting.