Hip-Pocket Papa

by Sandra Markle, Alan Marks (Illustrator)

Overview

Little papa, big job

Sandra Markle and Alan Marks, creators of the Boston Globe/Horn Book Honor Award-winning A Mother's Journey, offer an up-close look at the miniature world of the hip-pocket frog.

The male Australian hip-pocket frog, no bigger than an adult human's thumbnail, cares for his children as they grow from tadpoles to young froglets inside the pouches on his legs.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781632898845
Publisher:	Charlesbridge
Publication date:	09/24/2019
Sold by:	Penguin Random House Publisher Services
Format:	eBook
Pages:	32
File size:	44 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.
Age Range:	4 - 8 Years

About the Author

Sandra Markle has written over seventy nonfiction books for young readers, including her Growing Up Wild and Outside and Inside series. Her books have won awards from the Boston Globe/Horn Book, NSTA/CBC, ABA, and ALA. She lives in Florida.

Read an Excerpt

A male hip-pocket frog ducks beneath a button-sized mushroom cap. It’s a tiny space, but since he’s no bigger than a thumbnail, he fits with room to spare. Settling there, he croaks in a creaky voice: Eh! Eh! Eh! Eh! Eh! Eh!

Nearby, a female hip-pocket frog hears her mate and crawls away to find a meal. For the past eight nights and days, the pair has guarded this bit of forest floor together. Now the male focuses his golden eyes on one small spot on the leaf litter.There, beneath a covering of orange and brown leaves, is a glob of glistening jelly studded with a dozen pearl-like eggs—the tiny parents’ developing brood.

Editorial Reviews

Building on the appealing notion of nurturing fathers, Markle and Marks present this tiny Australian frog in the context of its natural environment. Both male and female hip-pocket frogs guard their developing eggs, but after they've hatched, the male keeps his tadpoles safe in hip pockets until they have used up their yolks and developed lungs. The poetic text follows one male journeying to a new and wetter home, describing the creatures he eats and those that want to eat him along the way. Without explicitly using the phrase, she even offers an example of the food chain: A quoll catches the dusky antechinus hunting the frog. These and other Australian animals from the story are further described in an animal glossary at the end. The detailed, realistic watercolor-and-pencil illustrations, mostly double-page spreads, provide a frog's-eye view of the shadowy forest floor, pulling out to show predators overhead and, once, for a panorama of the temperate rainforest. This intriguing, informative introduction is a worthy successor to the team's Finding Home (2008). (author's note, facts, further sources) (Informational picture book. 5-8)

Kirkus Reviews