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TIDDALICK THE FROG by Susan--Adapt. Nunes

TIDDALICK THE FROG

By

Pub Date: Oct. 1st, 1989
Publisher: Atheneum

In her second picture book, the author of Coyote Dreams (1988) retells an aboriginal Australian tale about a giant frog who swallows all the water there is and holds it--despite the other animals' pleas--until the little snake Noyang dances himself into a knot on Tiddalick's belly and makes him laugh ""so hard that the waters gushed from his mouth to nourish the earth once again."" Nunes' well-honed, humorous adaptation is just right for sharing aloud. In his unusual watercolors, Chen (The Tigers Brought Pink Lemonade, 1988) employs light, sun-dappled colors that form engagingly decorative patterns while evoking Australia's parched desert and its renewed verdure; his comic, complacent giant frog is a pleasure.