Hooray for Chester
Rina A. Foti
Ellen J. Hickman

Benchmark, 2003
unpaged, hbk, 24.95
1876615125

Imagine if you were the only one of you in your neighbourhood, and every time you went to make friends or play with some of the other children all they said was "Absolutely not!" How would you feel?

Chester is like that - he is a crocodile and he is the only one in the swamp. He just wants to make friends with the other creatures but each time he asks they are mean to him.

He gets called frumpy because he cannot fly like the lorikeets; clumsy because he cannot hurdle like the storks; dopey because he cannot race like the possums; gawky because he cannot swing like the bats; and awkward because he cannot somersault like the catfish. But one day Chester does do all of these things and the animals are very glad he can.

At first, we thought this was just a picture book for little kids and we think they would love it because it has such bright clear pictures for them to look at. It has words they can join in with and it is very funny at the end.

But when we started being Chester and thinking about what it would be like to be taunted and teased and whether we would try to save those who tormented us, we found that it was good for our age group too. Sometimes you have to read between the lines to get what the author is telling you.

4CM, Palmerston, ACT