Love Story! Theo's Princess by Ellen DeLange

As frogs go, Theo is a prince among amphibians. He even has a impressive name:

THEODORE CORNELIUS BAFFELUS, III.

But for some reason, Theo aspired to be a real prince of the fairy tale sort. As a tadpole, he loved the story of the Princess and the Frog, and he fervently wished that a princess would come along to kiss him and turn him into a real Prince.

But princesses seemed to be in short supply in his hometown. There was one, in the town castle's tower, but her guards rudely chased him away. No matter where he searched, no princess presented herself. So Theo decided to advertise. He created a goodly supply of lovely posters, offering a freebie kiss to all comers!

WANTED:Princess

But at the advertised time, Theo found himself waiting, with no princesses puckering up.

"ARE THERE NO MORE PRINCESSES?"

"OR DO THEY ONLY EXIST IN FAIRY TALES?"

But to his surprise, Theo soon saw a bevy of princesses approaching, and they lined up under a suitable tree. One was pretty in frills and lace trimmed pantaloons, one was pretty in pink, but with loud checkered stockings, and the third was a tad piggish, but wearing the requisite crown.

THE PRINCESSES WERE GIGGLING.

THEY HAD NEVER KISSED A FROG BEFORE.

One by one, they puckered up and placed a modest kiss on Theo's cheek. But time after time, when he took peek in his mirror, he saw no prince, just his same froggy face. Where were those promised powers of princesses?

"WAIT!" A SMALL VOICE CALLED.

AND BEFORE HE KNEW IT, A BEAUTIFUL FROG GAVE HIM A BIG KISS!

It was a lovely kiss. However, Theo did not turn into a prince. But. . .

HE FELT LIKE ONE!

And of course, love has a magic of its own, in Ellen DeLange's sweet story of true love, Theo's Princess (Clavis Press, 2021). Illustrated in charming pale pastels and great good humor by artist Monty Lee, this new fractured fairy tale is bound to please youngsters who sometimes like their fairy tales (and love stories) served up with a wink and a giggle.

For primary readers, who prefer their Valentine's Day stories on the spoofy side, share this one with Jon Scieszka's classic fractured fairy tale, The Frog Prince, Continued.

Midnight Peeper Creepers! The Froggies Do Not Want to Sleep by Adam Gustavson

These young dreamtime deniers do not want to snooze the night away. Instead, resorting to stealthy sneaking, they tiptoe outside where they can steal away through the night.

There in the dark they can hop happily, dance to their accordions, accouter themselves in dramatic costumes, and practice pedaling unicycles. They race through the dark roadways in red roadsters, joust with toilet plungers, and wrangle wild crocodiles. They want to practice ballet underwater, sing operatic arias, and pilot their spaceships ...

... ZIPPING THROUGH THE GALAXIES...

...DRINKING FIZZY SODA AND HOLDING BURPING CONTESTS WITH STRANGE, ALIEN LIFE-FORMS.

They do not fear jelly-fish-like monsters with squeezy, tickly tentacles that toss them downward through the clouds....

... and back to bed, in a tumultuous pile, to sleep, perchance to dream... while perchance a stray space monster rumages in a dastardly raid downstairs on their fridge....

And all this is done before midnight, with first-time author-illustrator Adam Gustavson's amphibian adventurers pursuing their dreams as nightie-night naysayers and bedtime avoiders, all the way to space and back. With strikingly conceived and drawn illustrations with a tip of the artiste's tam to Sir John Tenniel's and Kenneth Grahame's humorous amphibian characters, and told with a joyous narration in detailed two-page spreads, Gustavson's The Froggies Do NOT Want to Sleep (Charlesbridge, 2021) features fearless little frogs who live every child's dream of freedom from bedtime. This stupendously gleeful story of what to do when you should be snoozing is a five-star winner for picture book lovers of all ages.

Kirkus Reviews, "A zany, rib-tickling bedtime tour de force."

The Thrill of the Chase! Follow That Frog! by Philip C. Stead

KNOCK! KNOCK!

Dutiful niece Sadie enters her snoring Aunt Jane's chamber, bearing a tray with teapot and cup. The rooster is already on the foot of the bed crowing and the rest of the hens are pecking and grooming and squatting here and there. Aunt Jane protests!

CLOSE THE CURTAINS, SADIE! THAT COULD BE A SUITOR, BUT MY DAYS OF ROMANCE ARE JUST A MEMORY."

But the knocking persists, louder and more insistent, and reminds Aunt Jane of a memory of being bivouacked in the Peruvian jungle, cataloging amphibians for science when a giant frog swallowed the Admiral's quirky son.

"FOLLOW THAT FROG!"

"I DIDN'T CARE MUCH FOR THE ADMIRAL'S SON, BUT IT WAS MY JOB TO CATALOG THAT FROG!"

With devotion and not a little distress, Aunt Jane commandeers a motorcycle and gives chase, switching to tortoise back when the frog takes a bad turn at the Panama Canal. Aunt Jane switches her vehicle of choice to a seagoing bathtub headed for the Canary Islands, where indeed, there were an excess of... canaries, and where Aunt Jane takes the next blue whale going her way!

KNOCK! KNOCK!

Ignoring the increasingly loud noises at the door, Aunt Jane continues to describe the chase, past the Taj Mahal, the Pyramids and the ruins of Rome, and even gay Paree, where she says she and Sadie will one day see

"FOLLOW THAT FROG!" SHE WENT ON.

"ARE YOU SURE YOU DON'T WANT TO GET THAT DOOR, AUNT JANE?" VENTURED SADIE.

"I MAY NEVER, EVER, FIND THAT FROG, SADIE!" SAYS AUNT JANE, RESIGNEDLY.

KNOCK! KNOCK!

But Aunt Jane may see the giant frog sooner than she thinks, in the hilarious new picture book, Follow That Frog!(Holiday House, 2021)

With a jolly, cumulative, and outrageous plot, this new one from the award-winning Philip C. Stead, illustrated in the scratchy fine-line illustrations of Caldecott illustrator Matthew Cordell in the style of Quentin Blake, this story makes a good read-aloud in which kids will be chiming in with ever louder KNOCK! KNOCKS! throughout the charmingly ridiculous story. Says Horn Book's review "Text and art duel with each other to make the antics more and more outlandish, and every page-turn yields an unexpected and wonderfully ridiculous plot development. . . . All the while, someone keeps knocking at the door, where the perfect ending awaits on the other side."

Words of Wisdom from Amphibians! Frog and Toad--A Little book of Big Thoughts by Arnold Lobel

What can a yellow toad and a green frog tell us about friendship?? Quite a bit, in a comprehensive look back at Arnold Lobol's best-selling, award-winning I-Can-Read books, four of them, which, in addition to teaching early graders to read, imparts much more about making and keeping a friendship.

Frog and Toad have their moments of truth:

Friends tell you the truth....

"Frog, you are looking quite green!" said Toad, offering an ailing Frog a cup of curative tea.

 "But I always look green, Toad. I AM a frog!"

Even when it's hard to hear....

"You must not look at me in my bathing suit while I am getting in the water because I look funny in my bathing suit," said Toad.

"But Toad, you do look funny in your bathing suit," said Frog.

And when you don't feel like doing anything worthwhile, friends lie down and take a nap with you.

Even when you are in a totally grumpy mood, friends are flexible--ready to come back to visit...

..."about half-past May!!

Friends are there to share a pot of tea when their adventure plans are rained out, and to share cooling ice cream cones when the sun is out, and to just sit together and dream big dreams, in the new, retrospective look back from Arnold Lobel's quartet of books,Frog and Toad are Friends, Frog and Toad Together (I Can Read Level 2), Frog and Toad All Year (I Can Read Level 2), Days with Frog and Toad (I Can Read, Level 2) in Frog and Toad: A Little Book of Big Thoughts (Harper, 2020). For emergent independent readers, these gently humorous books are just the best.

Tail Tale! Tad by Benjie Davies

TAD WAS A FROG. WELL, SHE WAS ALMOST A FROG.

She was so small that she had to wiggle her tail twice as fast as anyone else to keep up.

Her tadbrothers and tadsisters warned her that she had to stay with the group...

OR BIG BLUB WILL GET YOU!

BIG BLUB WAS A BIG, NASTY FISH WHO SWAM IN THE DEEP, DARK, MURKY PART OF THE POND. HE WAS AS OLD AS MUD, THEY SAID.

They all said that he waited for a cloudy time when the pond turned gray... and then...

HE GLIDED OUT FROM THE DARK AND...  GULP!

Tad didn't want to think about Big Blub, so she stayed with the tadsisters and tadbrothers in the shallow, sunny parts of the pond.

But Tad noticed that her friends were growing longer legs, longer than hers, and their tails were getting shorter and shorter, much shorter than hers. And she noticed that each night when they gathered together in their leaf bed, there were fewer and fewer of them. Where did the others go?

SHE DIDN'T LIKE TO THINK.

And then her last tadbrother was gone.

Tad was alone and lonely. She was smart and knew where to find places to hide, but then one day...

THERE WAS BIG BLUB!

Tad knew she had to swim up, up, up and up, the fastest she had ever swum to the top. She made it to a rock at the edge of pond and used her new legs to clamber up on top of it.

Big Blub was out of luck and sank down into the murky depths where he belonged, and Tad's long legs tingled as she made the great leap to join her frogsisters and frogbrothers on land.

Benji Davis' Tad (Harper, 2020) is an appealing tale of metamorphosis, a universal story of waiting for your own time to come.

Tad is the plucky little runt of the bunch, and Big Blug is the big blobby bully we love to hate, as Tad makes the long leap to maturity just in the nick of time. Author Benji Davies builds tension as Tad waits while her friends lose their tails and leave her behind, while illustrator Davies uses the transition from the murky depths to the sunny shallows to the bright colors of the land, moving from brown-green to aqua to the vibrant reds and pinks of life on land in an artistic tour-de-force that supports his theme perfectly. Says Publishers Weekly, "With firm command of his artwork and his pacing, Davies weds keen suspense to the slow, difficult process of waiting for milestones."