Flora the Frog

Flora the Frog Written by: Shirley Isherwood and Anna C. Leplar
Flora is about 10 years old and like any girl enjoys school, playing, and her friends, but when the teacher announces that Flora will be a frog in the school play; she is less then thrilled. Flora wanted to be anything other then a frog for the school play and although she held these thoughts she couldn’t bare to reveal them to her excited teacher and her ecstatic mother whom made her the finest frog costume she’d ever seen once she heard the big news. No, Flora was stuck with her fat, green, frog custom and the despair of it teasing her every time she saw it. That is, until the day she saw 3 real and very beautiful frogs with spangles all over their skin hopping about. The story ends with Flora running home after discovering the real beauty of frogs deciding and announing that she would love to be a frog; but the costume needed one little tweak; it needed spangles!
The book is very large in size and every page has a huge picture of dim colors and realistic art. The writing is also large and it could be read by a younger aged child by themselves. The book makes a valuable point that everything is beautiful in its own way as well as teaching children to look at things in different perspectives for you may not see something so obvious. The Strength in this book is its style of writing that includes realistic dialogue that can bring a reader into the book and not just be on the outside looking in. The feeling of Flora in this story could happen to many children and therefore grab the reader; for instance feeling out of place or not wanting to share their feelings. I would suggest having this book be on the browsing shelf of a classroom for silent reading or perhaps even read aloud. After a read aloud session you could ask the children what they would do if they were feeling a certain way and didn’t want to tell anyone; what they could do to resolve their problem or how they could share their feelings. This could help children open up and learn to show their emotions.