The Books

Tadpole's Promise (Bccb Blue Ribbon Picture Book Awards (Awards))

by Jeanne Willis

Hardcover, 32 pages

Published by Atheneum/Anne Schwartz Books (2005-05-17)

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Amazon Description

The award-winning, unpredictable picture book from this best-selling author/artist team is now available for the first time in paperback. Tadpole loves his rainbow friend, the caterpillar, and she tells him she loves everything about him. "Promise that you will never change," she says. 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 a butterfly, Tadpole little realizes that now he will never know! Follow the predictable changes of a tadpole and a caterpillar to their natural conclusion in this award winning picture book.

One Potato Review

Heads up for the squeamish: the frog eats the butterfly who had anyway become a bit of a nag. Everybody changes. The final act does come as a surprise - the frog wearing a dutiful, if oblivious sort of expression - but this probably speaks more to our expectations for this type of book than to the author’s intention of getting one over on us. Because we should have seen it coming. Nature is slapstick that way. Not a bad place to begin the conversation. 

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