Children's Picture Books - The Chameleon Snake

The Chameleon Snake is a fun story about the psychopathy of a snake that sees other animals only as food and never as friends. This is a companion piece to The Love Ant. The illustrations for this story are found in two places; the same mural at the Guildford Public Library that carries The Love Ant, and in the throne built for the library.

The snake is the opposite of the ant in terms of his character and how he relatates to others. The ant, out of friendship, commits to a huge selfless act. The snake commits to restraint out of one particular future reward only. The ant could easily be at the mercy of other animals, but the snake is the predator. The refrain, "I must not eat anyone, I must be on my best behaviour", is repeated throughout the story as the snake must remind himself again and again that he will be kicked out of the library if he behaves badly. His only reason for behaving well is that he wants to enter the library to see the puppet plays that have been advertised in the Jungle Journal. Badly behaving animals are routinely thrown out of the library.

In this story the snake learns the great value of having friends and that restraint can lead to unpredictable great rewards. The snake ends up being the center of attention and makes all sorts of friends of animals that ordinarily wouldn't trust him, but he has one big habit to overcome. Only three or four more illustrations are needed to complete the story, but due to the order of things in my life I won't get to it for another year or so.

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