Zoe at Madge Eekal Reviews has come through again with a wonderful review for new picture book Froggy Day by Heather Pindar with illustrations by Barbara Bakos:
‘This is a wonderful, quirky and totally silly story. I absolutely loved it and fully expect it to become a firm favourite with young readers too. There isn’t the traditional story structure with a neatly defined beginning, middle and end. Instead, we have a series of fun pictures of the chaos the frogs cause with some clever play on words around fog and frogs. There is, however, an inspired ending when our television weather woman predicts the weather for the next day. It would spoil the fun to tell you what happens so you’ll have to read the book to find out.
Aimed at the younger end of the picture book market, the book uses simple language that is easy to understand. (The only more difficult word in the book is when the farm animals ‘stampeded’ but the pictures make the meaning more than clear). There are only a few words per page, making it easy to learn for children who want to join in. There’s also a good use of font sizes and different type-faces which adds interest to the text.
The pictures are bright and colourful with lovely stylised cartoon-like illustrations of the frogs. It’s great fun studying all the individual frogs antics as they hang upside down, settle down to sleep, balance on top of each other (or the nearest person or animal) or wave at the reader. Indeed, the pleasure of studying the individual frogs brings back memories of searching for worm in the Richard Scarry books. My personal favourites are probably the two frogs who settle themselves on the shelf in the supermarket and arrange what looks like a very civilised afternoon tea, or the frog doing the backstroke in Jan’s big mug of tea.
Overall this is a thoroughly fun story and, based on the twist at the end, I’m really hoping that Maverick publishing have a follow up book in mind.’
Watch this space! Read the full review here and buy a copy here