Happy National Alligator Day to all who celebrate! On this day, I am thinking of my great-great-grandfather Alexander Bentley, (pictured above, on the left). Alexander was a bonafide alligator hunter back in the 1800s, navigating the St. Johns River and the creeks around our hometown of Green Cove Springs, Florida. There are a lot of wild and unusual critters roaming/swimming/boating/4-wheeling in the state of Florida: iguanas, a multitude of snake species, manatees, flamingos, Florida Men. And Florida is the home of over a million alligators currently. Florida is definitely where the wild things are.

And that brings me to “Where the Wild Things Are,” the beloved children’s book by Maurice Sendak. In 1962, a year before “Where the Wild Things Are” came out, Sendak published “Alligators All Around: An Alphabet.” It was in a boxed set of four miniature books entitled “Nutshell Library.” I am a fan of children’s books generally, and I like the format of this small alphabet book. Sendak creates an alliterative phrase on each page, offering us vignettes from the everyday life of an alligator family (riding reindeer, juggling jellybeans, and so on).

There are also a few glimpses of the characters and scenes that show up in “Where the Wild Things Are.” The child on the “P” page favors our friend Max in “Wild Things.” The little gator on the “T” page looks like a rehearsal sketch for the famous wild rumpus of Max and his friends.

I plan to celebrate National Alligator Day this year by reading “Alligators All Around” with my four year old granddaughter. And I will tell her how we are both descended from a real-life dragon slayer.