Lots of frogs by Howard Calvert and Claudia Boldt
Hodder Children's Books, 2018. ISBN 9781444939644
(Age: 2-6) Recommended. Themes: Counting. Frogs. Tommy Fox has a box
that he takes to school for show-and-tell. Of course, as the box
jumps right and left, Tommy sneezes and the frogs leap away. The
children are delighted and the teachers shriek as the frogs play
hide-and-seek.
This is a very humorous story that will have children giggling out
loud at the antics of the frogs. They poke their tongues out at the
teacher, sit on the teacher's chair and even jump in the head
teacher's hair. When Tommy tries to catch them with a net, there is
even more fun. The expressions on the faces of the frogs are
priceless, each unique, and the frogs featured on the end pages are
just hilarious. Tommy's cheeky personality is evident from the
illustrations of him trying to catch the frogs. All the drawings are
in bright, eye-catching colours.
The rhyming text is very well constructed and would make a great
read aloud for the young, while the rhythm and rhyme, and shortness
of the text would help emerging readers work out the words. Children
will be happy to predict what is going to happen next, especially
after Tom finally gets all the frogs in his box and then smiles
wide.
Children will have lots of fun counting the frogs on different
pages, as the number in Tommy's net changes as does the number that
are free to get into mischief.
I can see this becoming a firm favourite for bedtime stories with
the very young and a brilliant book for beginning readers to try.
Pat Pledger