Dear Treefrog Review

Dear Treefrog

Written by Joyce Sidman

Illustrated by Diana Sudyka

Bibliography

Sidman, J. (2021). Dear treefrog (D. Sudyka, Illus.). Clarion Books.

ISBN 9780358064763

Summary

Joyce Sidman and Diana Sudyka have created a feast of sensory delights about tree frogs through their poems, illustrations, and field-notebook-style facts and labels. Sidman tells the story of a shy girl who has moved to a new house via the "Little Nest" moving company, which name I found delightful in a book about nature. She is wary of being a in a new place. Like the tree frog, who freezes instead of fleeing when scared, our heroine says, "I slow down too" (6). She spends the summer before school starts observing and befriending the treefrog in its habitat. These natural observations are recorded in color-saturated glory with meticulous labels of the habitat, with accompanying facts about the treefrog on each page. Through these 18 poetry musings, we learn more about the girl and her worries and watch her grow more confident, eventually making a friend who shares her love of nature. Sidman includes back matter that directs the reader to more resources about treefrogs.

Analysis

Dear Treefrog is a true marriage of text and illustration. It's hard to judge the poetry on its own merit, without the illustrations, because they enhance each other so well. In Such Quiet Feet, Sidnman's use of assonance,: "exploring each," "wet leaf," and "velvet petals," reflects the squelching sound of rain in concert. The hard consonance also in "velvet petals" is the sound of the raindrops hitting the leaves (7). Sudyka paints a picture that seems to move like the leaves that "dip and sway" in the rain. Her lush red flowers look like the reader can actually feel their "velvet petals" (7). Sidman uses some lovely parallelism in The World is Wet: "roaring," "thrashing," and "booming" to reflect the powerful relentlessness of a thunderstorm when you are small and scared (12). I particularly enjoy the image of the children in In Gym Today "finding their centers" looking "like so many treefrogs on the gym floor" (16). It is my favorite page in this delightful book.

Highlighted Poem

I am including a screenshot of this poem, because it is difficult to separate the text from the illustration.

Do You Remember

your other life?

Swimming through

duckweed

with a tail like a ribbon?

Do you remember how

the water felt

against your skin?

How you could drink

and breathe

at the same time?

How fast you could move

without legs?

Do you remember

when you wriggled up

into the sunshine?

How strange it felt

to take your very first

hop

from

one life

into another?

This is the best example of the text and illustrations working together. Sudyka's illustration reflects the sinuous movement of the swimming tadpoles. Sidman's text evokes the whimsical wonder of the twilight realm under the water as the treefrog lifecycles. This is a lovely tale of girl and frog, and I didn't know I needed that until I read it. Now I understand this line, "I love knowing that my days might have frogs in them" (13).

Use

Students will choose an animal and research its lifecycle and characteristics. They will write a poem utilizing this information and use water color to paint a field-note of their animal, with accompanying fact and labels.