The universality of the childhood experience is a perspective that is useful in the classroom where the student body reflects the multiethnic, multicultural roots of American culture. The novels from the Caribbean can add new material to the body of world literature and should be included in a crosscultural study of the "bildungsroman" (novels of childhood). One such novel is "Crick Crack Monkey" written by Merle Hodge. As opposed to other Caribbean novelists whose nostalgia for childhood takes on an extra dimension when they are displaced from the birthplace they love, Hodge presents the first full portrait of a young girl growing up in the Caribbean. Narrating in the first person, Cynthia Davis, nicknamed Tee, gives the reader a female perspective on life in the Caribbean, focusing on the two different worlds represented by her two aunts. This humorous novel chronicles the education and acculturation of a young girl, thus filling the gap caused by the dearth of developed female characters, in general, in Caribbean literature. (HOD)