A Frog’s Life

Nature writer Kelly (Even an Octopus Needs a Home) provides a warm and vividly detailed examination of frogs. Airy spreads offer facts about frog species, behaviors, diets, common predators, habitats, and life cycles—from fertilized egg, through life as a tadpole, to full-grown frog. Italian artist Borin renders her subjects in graceful watercolors, adding naturalistic detail through pen and pencil outlines and accents; the frogs’ brilliant array of skin colors are represented in mosaiclike patterns. A cutaway image shows a frog’s internal organs, while another graphic depicts a frog in the process of shedding its skin: “the frog stretches, turns, and ‘hiccups’ to loosen its old skin and pulls it over its head like a sweater,” Kelly writes. A section on ecological threats facing frogs concludes with a call for readers to protect the amphibians in their own local habitats. Ages 4–8. (May)