Title: The Froggy Books
Author: Jonathan London
Illustrator: Frank Remkiewicz
If I never have to read another one of these books that would be fine by me! BUT, that’s not going to happen as the kiddo so kindly nominated these as the must read series for the last two weeks running.
I picked up ten titles in the series at the library and have not had a break from them since. She saw frogs on the cover, so frogs we had to have, and we checked out everything available in the series.
They aren’t bad, they’re very toddler friendly actually, I’m just tired. Any time Froggy goes somewhere he has to flop, flop, flop. When he puts on his clothes it’s with a lot of zips, zats, and znats. There are bonks and clangs, lots of “Froooooooogggggy!” and “Whaaaaaat!” exchanges between Froggy and his parents. Then of course, there’s that defining moment in each story when Froggy “more red in the face than green” discovers he’s doing something ridiculous.
The kiddo loves them and I cannot sit down to read a Froggy book without reading at least three Froggy books. This week, on multiple occasions, Froggy has gone to school, learned to swim, gone to bed, played T-ball, eaten out, gone to Hawaii, played in a band (kiddo’s favorite), gotten dressed (my least favorite), had the best babysitter, and had a sleepover.
They don’t have to be read in any particular order, but if you happen to find them in order you will definitely benefit. London does a good job of bouncing previous lines from previous stories into a later book. For instance, if we had not read Froggy Learns to Swim I would not have understood why in Froggy Goes to School the characters start chanting ‘bubble bubble toot toot chicken airplane soldier’ and think that it has anything to do with swimming. I guess I missed out on that swimming lesson as a child. But thankfully, I’d been to Froggy’s swimming lessons, so it wasn’t too weird.
There’s a lot of Froggy books and I’m sure we shall read more of them in the future as we come across them. As I said, great toddler titles… for the toddler. Parents: you’ll be longing for the days when you were reading Eric Carle twenty times instead.