Saturday, November 1, 2008

Tadpole Rex - Kurt Cyrus

For: School-age kids
Published: 2008
Ratng: 3.5
Read: Nov. 1st, 2008
Endpapers: medium olive (both prehistoric AND froggy...)

A swamp is born in prehistoric dinosaurland, and in the swamp a puddle, and in the puddle a polliwog. Rex the poliwog. We watch him grow to be a full-fledged frog. Written in couplets, quite cleverly rhymed, the large 10 X 12 pages have no hint of white, only strong greens and swampy colors from edge to edge of the page. So many great greens! The illustrations are done on scratchboard and colored digitally - that sounds so modern and techy! I've no clue what they're talking about. Very sophisticated word choices....I'd certainly use it with my middle schoolers if the need for a prehistoric or frog study ever came up. A sample:

Primeval puddles were desperate places
Of ambush and panic and life-or-death chases

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