13th May Frog Jumping Day

Frog Jumping Day is a good day to celebrate frogs and their amazing ability.

'Frogs have great jumping capabilities and are the best jumpers among all vertebrates given their size.'

Collect all the frog books you can find, both stories and expository texts and set aside time to read and learn, read and laugh and read and share. The most borrowed frog book in the library is Juliette MacIver's The Frog Who Lost His Underwear. There are so many favourite 'frog' series in my library.
There's
* Frog by Max Velthuijs. There is a dozen or so books in this series and they have recently been reissued in a larger format with covers that no longer have a bordered illustration.

* A Boy, a Dog and a Frog by Mercer Mayer. These little books are textless and small hands love them and tell the stories to each other without any trouble. There are six of them.

* Frog and Toad by Arnold Lobel. This series has been around for a long time, but so many generations of children have learned to read using these beginning chapter books. They are always in print.

* Lester and Clyde by James Reese. These three books are very old now, out of print and hard to find, but I know teachers who share these stories with their class and then the children are keen to borrow them.

While these aren't a series, there are several versions of the dreamtime story of Tiddalick , a frog who caused a flood in my library, complete with puppets so that the children can make a play. It would be good also to introduce the fairytale  The Frog Prince  because it is one of the Grimm stories that not as many children know. Read a traditional version with fairytale language, not a 'reader' and then compare it with a spoof like Jackie Urbanovic's Prince of a Frog. Have fun revisiting lots of old favourites and jumping around like a frog. Below is a collection of stories about frogs. There are a large number of nonfiction books too listed here.

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22nd May Max Velthuijs (1923 - 2005) Arnold Lobel (1933 - 1987)

Today should be known as Frog Day. Both of these author/illustrators are best known for their series of books about a frog. Both write fables that give the children that read their books messages for how they should be living theirs. Both are thoroughly loved by children, so it is sad that there will never be any more.

Max Velthuijs is probably the best known Dutch children's book creator besides Dick Bruna. He won the Hans Christian Anderson Award in 2004 for his contribution to Children's Literature. Initially he illustrated other author's books, but with Frog in Love started a series of books about Frog and his friends that he wrote as well as illustrated. The books have cheerful, colourful illustrations, the stories always end with Frog and his friends solving their problems in a very positive way. Each of the animal characters has very specific traits and is easily identified behaviourly. There are about twelve titles about Frog. If you need to know what they are, look here.

American author/ illustrator Arnold Lobel won the Caldecott Award for Fables but he is best known for his books about Frog and Toad. These two characters also have very definite personality traits and readers expect them to behave in certain ways. The illustrations in these books, while not as bright, in fact they are rather green are also distinctive.

My favourite poster and verse about reading is by Arnold Lobel. Every library needs one!

You can see the poster at www.owlsquarepress.com/otpopr.html .These are the words:

Books to the ceiling, books to the sky.
My piles of books are a mile high.
How I love them!
How I need them!
I'll have a long beard by the time I read them.
≈ Arnold Lobel