10 Minute Review: How To Outrun A Crocodile When Your Shoes Are Untied

From the time I start typing until the time I hit publish I give myself 10 minutes to write these reviews. I do not include time finding the cover image in my 10 minutes. 

How to Outrun A Crocodile While Your Shoes are Untied

By: Jess Keating

Publication date: June 3, 2014

Yesterday I finished Jess Keating’s How to Outrun a Crocodile When Your Shoes Are Untied (We’ll call it CROC to save time the rest of this review).

Over the summer I fell in love with Matt Gomez’s post about the one rule in his classroom: Be Brave. My students and I have talked a lot about what being brave looks like over the course of this school year. They have a strong understanding that brave is different for everyone. Early in the year we saw Ivan’s bravery in The One and Only Ivan, and we cheered when Snail took the plunge in Deborah Freedman’s The Story of Fish & Snail. Watching Zoe’s dad’s bravery in A Crooked Kind of Perfect tugged at our hearts.

I’m looking forward to young readers learning about what bravery means to Ana when they read CROC. Ana’s life is a hot mess when her BFF moves to another continent, her celebrity grandfather stops by for an extended visit, the Sneerers bully her at school, and her parents inform her that her family is going to live INSIDE the zoo. With all these things on Ana’s plate she is expected to give a big presentation at the zoo. With both her parents as zoologists, and her grandfather a celebrity animal adventurist, Ana is expected to shine in this situation. The problem is: she is terrified. 

One thing that I learned from this book is that bravery is not something that you necessarily need to do alone. Ana’s bravery shines through because of the support she receives from the people that matter most to her.  In CROC we see that bravery can be a team effort.

I hope you like CROC as much as I did.