MOLE BOOKS: MOLE WITNESSES A MIRACLE IN NATURE & EXPLORE THE WORLD OF FROGS WITH MOLE

A curious mole continues to explore his neighborhood in this illustrated children’s book. 

In this series, Mole and his sister Molie usually wander around their town meeting community helpers. But the siblings and their friends have set their sights on the area’s wilder residents in this volume. In the first story, Mole and Molie are playing in their backyard when they discover a clump of butterfly eggs in their mother’s garden. As one of the eggs hatches into a caterpillar, they tend to their new friend, feeding it and keeping a close eye. One day, the caterpillar vanishes, replaced by a thorny chrysalis. Mole, Molie, and their friends are worried, but not for long, because soon a beautiful butterfly emerges from the chrysalis. The siblings are delighted by the turn of events. In the second tale, the brother and sister investigate tadpoles after a visit to a local pond. They watch some tadpoles turn into frogs, learning about their life cycle and the amphibians’ natural predators along the way. In the end, Mole is so enamored by this trajectory that he creates a special board to chart frog development for his little sister. It seems as though Sarna (Mole Calls the Police, 2017, etc.) still has plenty of stories to tell about Mole and his family and cohorts. This volume takes a nice turn from observing people to finding out about animals and the outdoors—young readers who are just starting to understand the life cycle of butterflies, tadpoles, and the like should want to know more. The follow-up questions asked at the end are helpful for fostering discussion and conducting further research (and inspiring fledgling marine biologists). But another round of editing would have benefited the book: there are some punctuation and grammatical errors (including missing commas and strange ellipses). Still, the vivid illustrations are sure to inspire a trip to see Mother Nature’s bounty, and what could be better than children wanting to read about their world?

A furry hero ventures outdoors in this engaging and colorful tale.