FROGGY GOES TO THE LIBRARY

Having eaten out, played T-ball, and, of course, gotten dressed in previous books, Froggy finally visits the library in his 25th outing.

“FRROOGGYY!” his mother yodels. Today is library day. Froggy jumps out of bed and, “zip! zoop! zup! zut! zut! zut! zat!”—he’s dressed and ready to go. The expedition is punctuated by typical Froggy mishaps: he drops all his books, fails to use his indoor voice, stands on the table, and so on. With each infraction, the unnervingly fanged librarian, Miss Otterbottom, chides him. At first spurning storytime as “for babies,” he of course is lured over to the story circle, where he is so excited by her “rhymes and songs” he becomes disruptive. Miss Otterbottom glares—and then decides that she can’t beat him so she’d better join him and leads all the children in wiggly high jinks. It’s all standard stuff, complete with much flopping and silly refrains for audience participation. Remkiewicz makes a serious misstep in continuing to depict Miss Otterbottom with an open book in her lap even as the text indicates that she’s moved on to fingerplays. This will confuse regular storytimers, who are not accustomed to seeing librarians abandon their books halfway through to accommodate disruptive children.

The only surprise this Froggy outing offers is the librarian’s peculiar behavior—maybe it’s time for Froggy to stay in bed