Croc and Ally Friends Forever and Fun, Fun, Fun! by Derek Anderson

Derek Anderson, illustrator of the Hot Rod Hamster Easy Reader series and Little Quack picture books debuts a new easy reader series this year where he is both author and illustrator. Croc and Ally are a duo who have taken their cue from other Easy Reader anthropomorphic animal duos like Elephant & Piggie. 2018 brings two entries to the series with plenty of potential for more. 

Each title includes three vignettes featuring the title characters. In Friends Forever, the two go chair shopping and hunt for the missing moon in the first and third chapters. The second story is a bit more abstract, with Croc being grumpy and Ally cheering him out of it with mimicry. The story ends at bedtime, with the characters complimenting each other on being a good friend. The text in this one is logically placed, and the design on these is intuitive for a beginning reader with text in predictable locations relative to the illustration, and with logical line breaks where needed. The font, kerning, and leading are all well matched to the abilities of the target reader. There is sound use of repetition and the illustrations support decoding most new vocabulary.

In Fun, Fun, Fun Ally goes swimming while Croc prefers to stay dry, Ally unsuccessfully attempts to pressure Croc into a change of hat, and a spider under their chairs leads the duo to call in a new character, Ally’s mother, from a bus, a train, and a plan ride away to relocate the spider. While mirroring many of the strengths of the first entry in the series, this title does stretch line breaks across page turns, and concludes with the line “There was only one thing to do” with an illustration depicting Ally making a phone call (to his mother, we can safely assume). As a result, this one is slightly less supportive of the beginning reader, requiring more confidence and comprehension. 

Of the two entries to this series, Friends Forever stands a stronger chance as a Geisel contender, matching excellent design choices and text that is well-supported by the illustrations. I’ll be very interested to hear what kids have to say about these titles, and whether they find the humor compelling, since as an adult reader I found Ally to be not such a good friend in the second installment (but maybe I’m just being grumpy like Croc). Regardless, these are a solid addition to the beginning reader duo bookshelves.