Toad by the Road

Toad by the Road

Author Joanne Ryder

Illustrated by Maggie Kneen

Henry Holt and Company 2007

37 pages

Children’s Poetry

This is a lovely book on a year in the life of a toad. It starts off by going through the different seasons of the year and what the toad goes through in each of them.  In the spring it talks about how toads sing songs together, calling the female toads to come so they can breed. Baby toads start off as tadpoles and even move from pond to pond.  Summer is all about staying cool and catching yummy bugs for the toads. It even says the only thing on the agenda for them is sleeping, skipping, hopping and eating. Toads enjoy the summer rain that falls on them, and even soak it in their skin. In the late summer early fall the toads shed their snug skin and feel so much better. Toads also play dead to trick people into walking away from them. In the winter time toads hibernate like bears do and wait until spring time.

The illustrations in this book are colorful and depict the life of a toad. The text jumps all over the page, and sometimes is even on top of the illustrations themselves. The medium used in this story was water colors, pen and ink. On top of the poem text on the page there is little sentences on the bottom of each page giving facts about the toads, and their lives to the reader. This helps because It allows the reader to be told information but still in a fun way. There also is bolded words, italicized words, as well as words in all capital letters. I think this may be difficult for a new reader who is just learning how print is supposed to look.

You could have wonderful science connections with this story. You can have the students make a life cycle chart of the toad and the seasons that go along with it. This will help the students really understand what the toads life is like. The students also could draw/ make their own toad out of art supplies. This can get the students thinking about the unique features that toads have. Lastly the students can write their own poem of what they would like about being a toad.