Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile by Bernard Waber. Houghton Mifflin, 1965.

This book is fairly obviously the personification of a child in Crocodile form. The mean neighbor doesn’t like Lyle the Crocodile and wants him in a zoo but through events, Lyle ends up rescuing him and his cat from a fire, thus solving the problem. It’s quaint and the personification allows the author to stick Lyle in a zoo for a time (can’t have a child getting sent off to a cage) while keeping the young reader engaged in Lyle’s antics which are so similar to a child’s own.

I found it a bit too long to read aloud comfortably. But I tend to, uh, skip parts when I read aloud.