Days+with+Frog+and+Toad+Tomorrow

Days With Frog and Toad: Tomorrow Publisher: HarperTrophy Price: USA $3.75 Reading Level: Grade 1-3 Pages: 12 Language: English ISBN: 0-06-44058-3

Summary: Frog woke Toad up and told him that he had a lot of things to do today, including things like cleaning the kitchen and watering the plants. Toad replies to Frogs constant telling of what to do that he will do all of these things tomorrow. He continues telling Frog each time he sees something that Toad has to do, and Toad continues to say he will do those things tomorrow. Soon after this, Toad gets very down in the dumps because he realizes that he has a lot of work to do tomorrow. He decides that if he does all of these things today, then tomorrow he can just relax. Toad gets out of bed and does all his chores, then goes back to bed and looks forward to tomorrow.

Review: I love this book. I have grown up reading all the tales of Frog and Toad and the author, Arnold Lobel, really does an excellent job sneaking lessons into his literature. Reading this story really interested me and brought me back to first and second grade when these were the only books I read. The illustrations in this book are very clever. When the story’s words do not do enough of the telling, the pictures explain what is going on and say what the words do not quite depict. The pictures are also very good visual cues for early readers. These pictures can help them to identify words more easily if they are sort of getting what the word is but not quite. This is a really great “I Can Read Book” for children first grade to third grade and has a lot of different sight words and will give students good practice with words and sounds that beginning readers might struggle with or can read all on their own.

Analysis of Literary Elements: The theme of //Tomorrow// would be not to wait until the last minute to do things. //Days With Frog and Toad// is a book collection filled with small books and lessons in each book. Each lesson pertains to a different type of lesson that a child of this age might have to learn or figure out along the way. This particular lesson explains that, if you get things done earlier rather than procrastinating, later you will have more free time to do whatever you want to do with your free time. Another literary element seen in //Tomorrow// was problem solving. The whole time Frog was telling Toad all the things he needed to get done he was not really listening and brushing off the problem saying that he would do it tomorrow. Then finally, he realized a problem, if he had all of these things to do tomorrow he would have no free time tomorrow. Toad problem solved and realized that in order to have free time tomorrow he needed to do all of these things today.

About the Author: Arnold Lobel is an American author of Children’s Literature. These include the //Frog and Toad// series and //Mouse Soup.// He wrote and illustrated both books. He also wrote many fables. In 1981 he won the Caldecott Medal for the year’s bet illustrated picture book. Lobel died from complications resulting from AIDS on December 4, 1987, but his literary works are still widely recognized and read throughout American literature today.