The Lady With the Alligator Purse by Nadine Bernard Westcott (1998)

ISBN 0316930741 - The Lady with the Alligator Purse (the book, not the actual lady) seems to suffer from a split personality, in my opinion. Board books are generally made for the 0-3 age group, children who chew on books and bend or tear the pages. The Lady, and the rest of this set, to be accurate, is really for an older group, maybe 3-5. Hand clapping/slapping games are a bit advanced for the tiniest kids and since this rhyme is based on one of those games, it seems to indicate the book isn't for those tiniest kids.

Miss Lucy had a baby... who would've eaten the bathtub if it fit down his throat. Fortunately, it didn't but Miss Lucy still put out the call to the doctor, who called the nurse, who called the lady with the alligator purse. Stop me if you've heard this before. All right, so you've probably heard it before, and a recap is probably not needed.

Westcott's adaptation is fun - and cleaner than the rhyme we used when we were kids - and her illustrations are nice and the lack of the usual vibrant, colorful images that fill most books for the 0-3 age group might be another indicator that the book is aimed at slightly older little readers. Fun, and fun is good, but it's fun that's not even original, so I can't do better than 3 stars for it.

- AnnaLovesBooks