NOISY FROG SING-ALONG

A ribbit-ing good follow-up to Noisy Bug Sing-Along (2013).

Expanding upon his 2013 book of the same title, Himmelman focuses his app on one species of frog per screen with accurate drawings and actual recordings. The onomatopoeic spellings give children a way to “sing along” as the bullfrog “jug-o-rums” and the peepers “peep, peep, peep.” Readers can touch the frogs or jiggle the screen to make them fill their pouches and sing, and it culminates in a chorus as all the frogs sing together. (Unfortunately, in “Read to Myself” mode, the recorded frog sounds cannot be activated for this chorus.) Following this, the “How They Really Sound” section includes individual descriptions with very cool interactive sound-wave graphs to accompany each frog’s unique voice. Also included are information about habitat and curious facts about each of the 12 species of frogs featured. Some have poison glands behind their eyes that make them distasteful to predators, while others breathe through their skins as they spend the winter under the mud. Here, readers are encouraged to pay close attention to each song to prepare for the challenging game at the end, in which readers match the sounds and sound-wave graphs to the corresponding frogs—although an incorrect match proves just as much fun as a correct one.

A nifty aural introduction to various frog species.