Tadpole's Promise

by Jeanne Willis, Tony Ross (Illustrator)

Overview

"Where the willow meets the water, a tadpole met a caterpillar. They gazed into each other's tiny eyes and fell in love. 'Promise me that you will never change', the caterpillar says." And foolishly, the tadpole promises. But as the seasons pass and he matures, his legs grow, and then his arms—and what happens to his beautiful rainbow friend? As he sits on his lily pad, digesting the butterfly he has just eaten, he little realizes that now he will never know!

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781783445868
Publisher:	Andersen Press, Limited
Publication date:	10/01/2018
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	32
Product dimensions:	7.90(w) x 10.00(h) x 0.20(d)
Lexile:	AD480L (what's this?)
Age Range:	3 Months to 4 Years

About the Author

Jeanne Willis and Tony Ross also collaborated on Chicken Clicking and Dr. Xargle's Book of Earthlets.

Editorial Reviews

"This tongue-in-cheek tale takes a typical love story and sets it squarely–and amusingly–on end. Ross's vibrantly hued pen-and-ink and watercolor cartoons depict the edge of a pond where a caterpillar and a tadpole meet and fall in love. . . . Willis strikes the perfect balance between the deadpan telling and the humorously overblown dialogue shared by the star-crossed pair, while the artwork masterfully enhances each and every nuance. Enjoy this funny story on its own merits or try using it to lighten up a science lesson." —School Library Journal starred review


"Breaks the mould in form as well as content." —Sunday Times

"In poetic, carefully crafted prose Jean Willis tells an ironic, tragic tale of blighted young love." - Linda Pagett - Writeaway.co.uk

From the Publisher

In this deceptively innocuous love story, a caterpillar and a polliwog pledge their love, promising each other that they will never change. Fat chance, obviously: Each time they reunite, polliwog has grown new limbs. When he loses his tail, the caterpillar declares her heart is broken and huffs off to nurse her sorrows in a cocoon. Ross illustrates this economically told tale with equally sketchy watercolors, creating a serene natural setting, but turning it sideways so that the gutter becomes the boundary between land and water, and keeping background detail to a minimum to maintain visual focus on the rainbow-hued caterpillar and her "shiny black pearl." In the end, she emerges rather different in form herself, but when she repentantly flutters down to a certain frog at the water's edge, the romance comes to an abrupt and fatal end. The setup being perfect enough to leave even adult readers unsettled, this makes a promising addition to the "share if you dare" list, next to, say, Chris Raschka's Arlene Sardine (1998). (Picture book. 6-8)

Kirkus Reviews