Longest subtitle ever! A collection of poems, fables, short stories and little rhymes, all about frogs. Quite a few Emily Dickenson poems. There’s a nice description of wood frogs by Henry Thoreau that makes me wonder why I disliked his book so. Some variations of stories about the frog transforming into a prince, or blessing a young man and then becoming his bride. I recognized quite a few but they were told differently than I was familiar with. Now I’ve read -finally!- what must be the original ‘Frog Would A-Wooing Go’ that’s featured in that Ramona book where she has to stay at a neighbor’s house after school and play with the younger kids and they dress up and dance around to this song. I never got it before. Called ‘The Lovesick Frog’ here.
My favorites of the stories were ‘Mainer the Frog’ an Asian legend, where a frog goes back and forth between earth and heaven hiding in a jug that the heavenly lord’s servant women bring to a well, to acquire someone a bride. And ‘the Frog Race’ by Leslie Thomas from The Virgin Soldiers, where some bored servicemen catch and cajole bullfrogs into racing for bets. And ‘The Frog Catcher’ by Henry J. Finn, wherein a man short of stature and teased by all the taller, robust men in town, is tricked into catching a hundred frogs from a pond and dumps them in the middle of the tailor’s shop! But the one called ‘Across the Andes by Frog’ was so nonsensical it wasn’t at all even funny. I didn’t get it. The rest was all entertaining and even a bit enlightening- there’s some sections just about frog physiology and old beliefs about them as well. Including descriptions of how and why they are so pervasively used in science experiments (easy to dissect). So not all completely pleasant, but a good read nonetheless.
Borrowed from my sister. This was a book I had gifted to her decades ago, because she likes frogs. I had never read it myself. I’m glad I did.
Completed on 7/23/24.
One Response
Kinda strange that I only found two reviews of this book online (on LibraryThing, the GoodReads comments were too brief) and they were both negative. Said it was creepy and would give a child nightmares. Well, maybe the parts about dissection and the recipe for stewed frog legs. I glossed over those and enjoyed the stories, I didn’t get a creepy vibe from it at all!