Tenali Tashiya’s Scales: A Crocodile Finds His Place at Superhero School
A crocodile arrives at superhero school. His teacher welcomes him. His classmates scream and run to the other side of the room.
Scales takes a seat alone at the last table and hopes they will become his friends.
That small scene gives Tenali Tashiya’s Scales, the Kind Crocodile its emotional centre. Scales knows what he wants to become. The people around him first see something to fear. Before he can save anyone, he has to find a place where he can learn.
Tenali wrote and illustrated the book at ten. Her hero eats apples, builds a flying machine and sets off for a school on a mountain. The adventure has the cheerful freedom of a child deciding that the world ought to contain somewhere you can train to become a superhero.
A dream that survives the laughter
At the beginning, Scales lives alone in a deep lake. He likes peace, friendship and fruit. When he tells his friends about his ambition, they laugh. A crocodile, they think, should know his limits.
Scales is hurt, but he packs his bag. Along with fruit and a map, he takes a flying machine he has made himself. It is a little rickety. He trusts it enough to begin.
The bag is a lovely detail. An ambition becomes something a child can picture preparing for: choose what you need, put it together and leave home. Tenali lets determination take the form of an actual journey, with rocks, branches and a mountain that suddenly looks much larger up close.
Her hero still feels afraid. The story gives him something useful to do with that feeling. He checks his map, considers the obstacle and remembers the machine he brought.
The adults who make room
Miss Claire, who receives Scales at the school, is surprised to meet a crocodile. She welcomes him anyway. Mr. Jackson, his teacher, reassures the frightened class and gives the new pupil his superhero kit.
Those responses matter. A young reader may know the feeling of entering a room where everyone else already seems to belong. Here, two adults make the unfamiliar child’s arrival possible. Their welcome allows Scales to stay long enough to practise.
Training follows: flying, jumping and helping others. When a forest fire breaks out, Scales carries animals to safety one by one. He helps rebuild their homes afterward. Rescue includes the quieter work of making somewhere habitable again.
The school gives him equipment and instruction; the forest gives him people who need both. His ambition begins to acquire a purpose beyond winning approval.
A hero drawn by his young creator
The illustrated pages make Scales an approachable companion. He has a long green snout, a rounded body and a red cape. In one picture he floats through a blue sky holding an apple; in another, he stands between the adults at school with his backpack on. The extraordinary ambition sits beside familiar objects a child already knows.
Tenali created the words and illustrations, with colouring support from Nishan Senevirathna and design by Dilini Sewwandi. The finished book preserves the directness of her imagination. A crocodile can want friendship. A mountain can contain a school. A homemade machine can carry someone toward a future that other people find ridiculous.
The later adventure becomes more serious, including danger and sacrifice. Adults reading with younger children may want to leave room for a conversation about the ending. That change in emotional weight gives Scales’s choices consequences beyond the medal he hopes to win.
Something to talk about together
The classroom scene offers a natural place to pause during a shared reading. What could the other pupils have done when Scales arrived? What helped him stay? The forest rescue raises another question: why does he remain to rebuild after the immediate danger has passed?
These questions come from events in the story. Children can return to the pictures and decide for themselves.
Tenali’s achievement is to give her gentle hero somewhere to go, something to learn and someone to help. Scales begins with an ambition that earns laughter. His journey invites young readers to imagine what might happen if they gave an unusual newcomer a seat beside them.
Explore Scales, the Kind Crocodile · Meet Tenali Tashiya