If You Hopped Like a Frog

by David M. Schwartz, James Warhola (Illustrator)

Overview

If you hopped like a frog.... you could jump from home plate to first base in one mighty leap!If you lifted like an ant...you could lift a car!If you grew as much in your first nine months of life as you grew in the nine months before you were born...you would weigh more than 2 1/2 million elephants and would be taller than a mountain!Did you know that a frog can jump 20 times its body length? Or that an ant can lift 50 times its weight? Or that a baby's weight increases 3 1/2 billion times during the nine months before it is born? These are but a few of the outrageous ratios that will amaze everyone! Students and teachers alike will have hours of fun exploring these delightful comparisons — and inventing endless others of their own!David Schwartz has written the book in simple statements. And with a stretch of his imagination, artist James Warhola takes off on these wacky "what if" situations as he literally depicts the super-humans that would exist if people had the same super qualities as animals. For more serious math buffs, the author provides pages at the back of the book with equations and scientific facts that show just how these wacky but fascinating ratios are measured. As with How Much Is a Million?, this is another math book with endless possibilities for involving and exciting math lessons. Teachers will love this as much as their students will!

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780590098571
Publisher:	Scholastic, Inc.
Publication date:	09/01/1999
Series:	If You...
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	32
Product dimensions:	8.50(w) x 11.00(h) x (d)
Lexile:	AD740L (what's this?)
Age Range:	7 - 10 Years

About the Author

Artist and illustrator James Warhola is the nephew of Andy Warhol. He received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in design from Carnegie Mellon University and then studied at the Art Students' League of New York. He has designed over 300 science fiction and fantasy covers for books by such authors as Spider Robinson, Heinlein, and W. Gibson. He also serves as a consultant to the Museum of Modern Art (the Warhol Family Museum) in Medzilaborce, Ruthenia, the ancentral home of the Warhol family.

Since 1987, he has concentrated on illustrating children's books, including If You're Happy and You Know It and The Wheels on the Race Car for Orchard Books. He wrote and illustrated Uncle Andy's, which won a 2004 IRA Children's Book Award.

James Warhola lives in Tivoli, New York, with his family.

Editorial Reviews

If you could hop like a frog, were strong as an ant, or had the brain of a Brachiosaurus, imagine how different your world would be! In this book the author examines some of the amazing physical attributes an abilities of animals and compares them with those of humans. The text and humorous illustrations provide reader with an eye-opening look at ratio and proportion. Four pages of problem-solving exercises at the back of the book give the reader additional information about each comparison along with thought-provoking questions for follow-up. Sure to be a hit with both reluctant readers and math enthusiasts.
— Mailbox Bookbag Magazine

Tricia Gardella

In this high-spirited book, Schwartz does for ratio and proportion what he did for numbers in How Much Is a Million? The author, in an opening letter to readers, admits his secret childhood wish: that he could "hop like a frog," which leads to its corollary--"Once you know that a frog can jump twenty times its body length, you can figure out how far you could hop if you hopped like a frog." Schwartz continues to extrapolate such kinds of information into fun-filled comparisons: "If you ate like a shrew, you could devour over 700 hamburgers in a day!" Warhola (Bigfoot Cinderrrrrella) matches the text with wit and whimsy, as he imagines what would happen if children grew as fast in their first nine months after birth as they do during pregnancy: a gigantic baby tips an enormous seesaw that uses a mountaintop for a fulcrum and raises a mound of 2.5 million elephants at the other end. Author and artist wisely let the dramatic facts speak for themselves, with just a bit of a wink: "If you flicked your tongue like a chameleon... you could whip the food off your plate without using your hands! But what would your mother say?" The book concludes with straightforward mathematical and zoological explanations for each vignette, then invites readers to undertake some simple and amusing equations of their own. Trivia fans and aspiring scientists alike will revel in these pages. Ages 5-9. (Sept.) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Gr 1-3-This picture book invites children to learn about some of the amazing things that animals can do. For example, "If you ate like a SHREW...you could devour over 700 hamburgers in a day!" These tidbits of information are accompanied by cartoonlike illustrations that add to the fun of imagining what readers could do if they had the physical characteristics of different creatures. While this is an amusing, although simplistic picture book, the author's note presents it as a math concept book intended to introduce children to the concepts of ratio and proportion. Thus, children learn that the ant is "lifting 50 times its own weight." Kids are then challenged to use their own weight to figure out what they could lift if they had similar strength. However, the math portion is relegated to a few pages of small print at the end of the book, where readers are much less likely to pay attention to it. It will take an enterprising teacher or parent to extract the intended math lesson. Nevertheless, youngsters will enjoy the humor of both the text and the full-color illustrations.-Arwen Marshall, New York Public Library Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

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