Bad crab by Amelia McInerney
![cover image](https://www.readplus.com.au/covers/badcrab.jpg)
Illus. by Philip Bunting. Omnibus, 2019. ISBN: 9781742994475.
(Age: 3+) Highly recommended. Themes: Fish, Crabs. Retribution,
Friendship. When Bad Crab bites his friends, the Fish, the Octopus
and Seahorse, they quickly retire to the wall above the Crab and
hide behind a concrete ball. He looks up at them and is dismayed. He
does not seem to realise that it is his behaviour which has made his
friends go away.
Along comes a Lobster and surprisingly it bites him. The Crab's
three friends swim down to help him. They attach themselves to him
giving him extra oomph and he bites the Lobster back. The Lobster
retires behind the seaweed. But Crab sees a Grey Shark approaching
and his friends quickly swim back to their hiding place, leaving
Crab alone on the sea floor.
But the friends then roll the concrete ball onto the Shark, leaving
him defenceless but unable to release Crab from his gigantic mouth.
The friends again work together to release Crab from the Shark, and
all seems to going along well, but Crab seems impelled to do another
bad thing, he rolls the rock onto Lobster.
The wonderful illustrations beg the reader to look more closely: I
loved the expressions on their faces and the wordless nature of the
book, begging readers to insert their own words on every page. There
will be lots of joining in as the book proceeds.
A wonderfully funny tale of deeds coming back to haunt you, this
Crab is that naughty child, forever niggling other people, annoying
in so many ways and impervious to the fact that it is his behaviour
which is not wanted. When people retaliate it is never their fault,
but Crab here gets what he deserves, and it is up to his nicer
friends to extricate him from that position.
Lots of discussion about responsibility will proceed from this funny
look at behaviour, and many will be able to point out instances of
bad behaviour being reciprocated.
Fran Knight