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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

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BE BOLD, BOB
by Jane Porter ; illustrated by Jenni Desmond

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

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

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BUTT OR FACE?

From the Butt or Face? series

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)

Pub Date: July 11, 2023

ISBN: 9781728271170

Page Count: 40

Publisher: Sourcebooks eXplore

Review Posted Online: May 9, 2023

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2023

Categories:

CHILDREN'S ANIMALS | CHILDREN'S SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

- BOOK REVIEW
ODE TO GRAPEFRUIT
by Kari Lavelle ; illustrated by Bryan Collier

- BOOK REVIEW
WE MOVE THE WORLD
by Kari Lavelle ; illustrated by Nabi H. Ali

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DON'T TRUST FISH

by Neil Sharpson ; illustrated by Dan Santat ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 8, 2025

A ribald and uproarious warning to those unschooled in fishy goings-on.

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Sharpson offers so-fish-ticated readers a heads up about the true terror of the seas.

The title says it all. Our unseen narrator is just fine with other animals: mammals. Reptiles. Even birds. But fish? Don’t trust them! First off, the rules always seem to change with fish. Some live in fresh water; some reside in salt water. Some have gills, while others have lungs. You can never see what they’re up to, since they hang out underwater, and they’re always eating those poor, innocent crabs. Soon, the narrator introduces readers to Jeff, a vacant-eyed yellow fish—but don’t be fooled! Jeff’s “the craftiest fish of all.” All fish are, apparently, hellbent on world domination, the narrator warns. “DON’T TRUST FISH!” Finally, at the tail end, we get a sly glimpse of our unreliable narrator. Readers needn’t be ichthyologists to appreciate Sharpson’s meticulous comic timing. (“Ships always sink at sea. They never sink on land. Isn’t that strange?”) His delightful text, filled to the brim with jokes that read aloud brilliantly, pairs perfectly with Santat’s art, which shifts between extreme realism and goofy hilarity. He also fills the book with his own clever gags (such as an image of Gilligan’s Island’s S.S. Minnow going down and a bottle of sauce labeled “Surly Chik’n Srir’racha’r”).

A ribald and uproarious warning to those unschooled in fishy goings-on. (Picture book. 4-7)