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SO YOU WANT TO BE A FROG

Name: SO YOU WANT TO BE A FROG
Author: Jane Porter
ISBN: 9781536225136

by Jane Porter ; illustrated by Neil Clark ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 25, 2023

Audience participation required.

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Fabio Frog gives readers the scoop on how they can be fabulous frogs…and a clever dose of frog facts to boot.

Fabio addresses readers directly, and though the initial checklist for joining the Frog Club is daunting (“hop twenty times your body length,” “thrive on flies”), Fabio breaks down the 10 rules of being a frog and encourages readers to attempt many, giving them kudos for the skills that humans will have an easier time handling (croaking and wriggling). After a look at Fabio’s early years (the frog life cycle), the narrator asks kids to stick out their tongues. Though the frog is dismayed at just how short their tongues are (“If you were a frog, your tongue could reach your belly button!”), they quickly move on to frogs’ coloring and habitats around the world, along the way introducing several species of frogs and the adaptations that make them unique. Croaking, frog paleontology, keeping cool, and eating habits are also covered along with some random facts that are sure to amaze and astound any audience. Clark matches Fabio’s tongue-in-cheek tone with digitally created cartoon frogs mixed in with more realistic-looking species when they are specifically mentioned in the text. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

Audience participation required. (Informational picture book. 3-9)

Pub Date: April 25, 2023

ISBN: 9781536225136

Page Count: 32

Publisher: Candlewick

Review Posted Online: Feb. 24, 2023

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2023

Categories:

CHILDREN'S ANIMALS

- BOOK REVIEW
THE BOY WHO LOVED EVERYONE
by Jane Porter ; illustrated by Maisie Paradise Shearring

- BOOK REVIEW
SO YOU WANT TO BE AN OWL
by Jane Porter ; illustrated by Maddie Frost

- BOOK REVIEW
BRIAN THE BRAVE
by Paul Stewart ; illustrated by Jane Porter

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FIND MOMO EVERYWHERE

From the Find Momo series , Vol. 7

by Andrew Knapp ; illustrated by Andrew Knapp ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 6, 2024

A well-meaning but lackluster tribute.

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Readers bid farewell to a beloved canine character.

Momo is—or was—an adorable and very photogenic border collie owned by author Knapp. The many readers who loved him in the previous half-dozen books are in for a shock with this one. “Momo had died” is the stark reality—and there are no photographs of him here. Instead, Momo has been replaced by a flat cartoonish pastiche with strange, staring round white eyes, inserted into some of Knapp’s photography (which remains appealing, insofar as it can be discerned under the mixed media). Previous books contained few or no words. Unfortunately, virtuosity behind a lens does not guarantee mastery of verse. The art here is accompanied by words that sometimes rhyme but never find a workable or predictable rhythm (“We’d fetch and we’d catch, / we’d run and we’d jump. Every day we found new / games to play”). It’s a pity, because the subject—a pet’s death—is an important one to address with children. Of course, Momo isn’t gone; he can still be found “everywhere” in memories. But alas, he can be found here only in the crude depictions of the darling dog so well known from the earlier books.

A well-meaning but lackluster tribute. (Picture book. 4-8)

Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024

ISBN: 9781683693864

Page Count: 32

Publisher: Quirk Books

Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023

Categories:

CHILDREN'S ANIMALS | CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES

- BOOK REVIEW
LET'S FIND MOMO!
by Andrew Knapp ; photographed by Andrew Knapp

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BUTT OR FACE?

by Kari Lavelle ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 2023

A gleeful game for budding naturalists.

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Artfully cropped animal portraits challenge viewers to guess which end they’re seeing.

In what will be a crowd-pleasing and inevitably raucous guessing game, a series of close-up stock photos invite children to call out one of the titular alternatives. A page turn reveals answers and basic facts about each creature backed up by more of the latter in a closing map and table. Some of the posers, like the tail of an okapi or the nose on a proboscis monkey, are easy enough to guess—but the moist nose on a star-nosed mole really does look like an anus, and the false “eyes” on the hind ends of a Cuyaba dwarf frog and a Promethea moth caterpillar will fool many. Better yet, Lavelle saves a kicker for the finale with a glimpse of a small parasitical pearlfish peeking out of a sea cucumber’s rear so that the answer is actually face and butt. “Animal identification can be tricky!” she concludes, noting that many of the features here function as defenses against attack: “In the animal world, sometimes your butt will save your face and your face just might save your butt!” (This book was reviewed digitally.)

A gleeful game for budding naturalists. (author’s note) (Informational picture book. 6-8)