The Dentist from the Black Lagoon

Young Hubie is nervous when the dentist visits his school during Dental Health month. He expects to have a bad experience during his examination based on the bad things he heard about bridges, caps, gas, and drillings. The quirky, humorous illustrations enhance the comedy in the story. Often covering full spreads, the colorful painterly illustrations visually exaggerate the humor in the text. For example, when they discuss bridging your teeth, they show a large draw bridge coming out a person’s mouth. Most Pre-K to early elementary school readers will probably not know what most of these terms mean in the real dental world, but that dental education is not the purpose of the book. Instead, each page spells out a dental fear or anxiety in a humorous, nonthreatening way as Hubie awaits his turn for his check up. The final page of the book includes a full page of tooth riddles that young readers will appreciate as teeth are a major focus at this stage in their development. I would not recommend this as a read aloud as most of the “story” is conveyed in the illustrations which would be hard to view from a distance. ( )

Genre: This book is an fantasy/informational book.This book describes things that a dentist could do but the illustrations show an exaggeration of what is really done by the dentist that is why it is a fantasy. I believe they use both of the genres very well.
The antagonist of this story is the dentist. The dentist strikes fear in the minds of children until of them meet the dentist ( )