This is downright hilarious! I read the library's copy, but I bought my own. ( )

The Croc Ate My Homework by Stephan Pastis is a collection of comics from the Pearls Before Swine strip. These were apparently chosen for younger readers, relying on "off the wall puns" and "dark humor."

Basically by dark humor, they mean the Croc neighbors desperately wanting to eat their neighbors (the zebras, and later different animal types). But the Crocs are troublesome, at best. There Croc jokes are just a couple of jokes repeated non-stop. Joke the first: praying to God in broken English for a chance to eat the neighbor. Joke the second: educated child Croc being horribly embarrassed by violent, crude parents.

The Croc parents speak in a broken English that's disturbingly close to ebonics. They also have insatiable hunger for violence against their neighbor, a proper English speaking zebra (who as a black and white character, is perhaps an "Oreo"). It's basically every black male stereotype dressed up in animal skins to make these stereotypes "acceptable."

I did let my daughter read The Croc Ate My Homework. Most of the things I found objectionable went over her head. By the last third of the book, though, even she was picking up on the problems with the Crocs (without prompting from me). ( )