by Moe Zilla

Created on: May 20, 2010

"This is the tale of a toad..."

But not just any toad. Author-illustrator Ruth Brown wants you to know just how ugly this frog is. She'll do it with her illustrations, showing the black-eyed, lumpy frog in dark green waters in a grey, misty swamp. And her dark "earth" colors are complemented by a fun description of the creature - written entirely in rhyme!

"A muddy toad, a mucky toad

a clammy sticky, gooey toad..."

Part of the fun of a children's book is imagining the details of a story from clues in its simple text. That swamp sure looks nasty, and by the end of the book I'd started to wonder if it was prehistoric. Is that creature on the last pages a giant alligator - or a scaly and ferocious dinosaur? Brown's doesn't say, staying true to the perspective of the toad.  But all her adjectives suddenly lead the reader into  a surprisingly compelling story.

The toad is "odorous, oozing, foul, and filthy..."  It's covered with lumps, bumps and speckled humps. There's page after page of her deliciously dirty description, and "he can't even see very well," Brown adds. "So, winking and blinking, he waddles and stumbles, trudges and trundles...

"...straight into the jaws of a monster!"

The frog's leg is seen sticking out of that scaly creature.  But turn the page and there's as happy ending after all.  "Yuuuuuuck!" blurts the monster, spewing out a mouthful of greyish-green water - and the toad, with a smile on its face. It turns out there was a point to its ugliness after all. And now Brown describes the toad as "happy,", "safe," the "carefree and self-confident toad..."

I think young readers may enjoy the dark story, especially the "gross out" factor of a slimy, dirty toad. And the watercolor illustrations are realistic but soft-edged, rewarding readers who take the time to study all their colors.  If you look carefully, you'll see that a second creature lurks in the background from the very beginning of the book. It's long and scaly, with its own dark reptilian eyes, and it's getting closer to the toad throughout each page of description. (It's a good thing that toad is so slimy after all!)

I appreciate the way this story was so simple, spending most of the book describing the all the details of the toad's life. And unlike many children's book, the animal character wasn't portrayed as something cute or human. When the story finally arrived at its moment of crisis, it was a realistic drama that was taken from the real world of nature.

And in the real world of nature - toads are muddy and mucky!

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