Two Tough Crocs

"Sylvester spent all day making sure everyone knew how tough he was," writes Bedford (Mole's Babies). "He snapped branches in his jaws and chased small animals for fun. So did Arnold." The seemingly inevitable smackdown between these two rival crocs is derailed when they're one-upped by a bigger and even tougher croc named Betty ("She had the ugliest tough-croc face and bulgiest tough-croc eyes Sylvester and Arnold had ever seen"). The story takes a predictable turn: the cowed Sylvester and Arnold first escape and then befriend Betty (getting dunked in brown swamp mud proves to be the great equalizer), and when last seen, the once-terrible trio is enjoying some well-behaved jungle gym time with the smaller animals they used to terrorize. This allegory for rough-and-tumble playground dynamics gets some extra oomph from Jellett's (My Dad Thinks He's Funny) handsome yet unruly images. Subtle texture, shading, and playful dimension lend his relatively simple settings depth, and his croco-macho reptiles have particular presence as they thunder and blunder through the muddy pages. Ages 4%E2%80%938. (Jan.)