Lots of frogs by Howard Calvert and Claudia Boldt

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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

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