Customer Reviews

The Adventures of Grandfather Frog (Dover Children's Thrift Classics)

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The Adventures of Grandfather Frog, is a charming tale that teaches young readers the importance of expanding one's horizons, and to never be against learning something new. Case in point, is Grandfather Frog who is a well respected, extremely knowledgeable resident of the Smiling Pool (one of Burgess' famous locations in his children's novels).

Grandfather Frog has never left the Smiling Pool, he was content staying there. His cousin however, Mr. Toad, wasn't quite that way. Mr. Toad like many others ventured out long ago to see the "great world" and every time that he would come back to the Smiling Pool to visit Grandfather Frog, the two would bicker over who chose the wiser course in life. One day Mr. Toad gets the better of the argument, so Grandfather Frog makes up his mind to venture out and see the great world for himself. Along the way, Grandfather Frog is met with many hardships such as learning to hop on harder ground as opposed to the softer ground that he was familiar with. He also is constantly on the alert from predators. Foolishly, on multiple occasions he ignores the advice of his friends on account of his pride; not doing this is a great moral that Burgess instills upon his young readers.

The book is 87 pages in big and friendly font size, and has short 3-4 page chapters that make for great bedtime readings. The illustrations are wonderfully crafted too. My young daughter loves the book being read to her at bedtime. I hope you take my advice and give the book a try.

Darien Summers, author of The Mischievous Hare, a children's book.

This is a wonderful book and I highly recommend it. However, the prospective buyer should be informed that the illustrations in this Dover edition are NOT by the original illustrator, Harrison Cady. Instead, they are crude redrawings by another artist, Thea Kliros. Although they are better than the illustrations in the Dover titles for which artist Pat Stewart did the crude redrawings, they are not as charming as Cady's work.

It's ironic that one reviewer here thought the crude redrawings in this Dover edition were "wonderfully crafted"; no doubt they would like the real Cady illustrations all the more. On the other hand, that review is not of a "Verified Amazon Purchase", so maybe that reviewer is really talking about a non-Dover edition, with real Cady illustrations.

Some of the other Dover editions of Thornton Burgess books do have original Harrison Cady illustrations.

To get real Harrison Cady illustrations of this title, you'll have to buy a used book. There were two sets of original Harrison Cady illustrations for this title:
-- Published by Little, Brown, with 6 full-page grayscale illustrations.
-- Published by Grosset & Dunlap, with 14 full-page line drawings, including line-drawing versions of all 6 original grayscale illustrations in the Little, Brown editions, plus many smaller line drawings.

The redrawings in this Dover edition are of the 6 Little, Brown illustrations.

I recommend the Grosset & Dunlap editions. Cady did them decades later, after he had grown as an artist. Even though the Grosset & Dunlap line drawings are simpler than the Little, Brown grayscale illustrations, they are more charming. On the other hand, the Little, Brown grayscale illustrations better show Cady's remarkable vision for Burgess' creatures, so if you can get both, that's ideal. But either one is better than the drawings in this Dover edition.

My mom read all the Thorton W. Burgess books to us as small children. We checked them out of the library, and I loved them as a kid. I was so pleased to see these republished again by Dover. I think they were out of print for a while. I have bought as many of the titles as I can find, and have now started reading them to my 2 year old. The Grandfather Frog story was so well written it captivated his interest, and this is amazing because there are only a few black and white pictures interspersed among the chapters. I am so glad my kids can enjoy these stories, too. They have subtile morals embedded in the stories about not being greedy, and being helpful, etc, that are nice, too. We also bought Lang Elliott's book on frog songs to compliment this story book. They now know exactly how Grandfather frog's "chugarum" is supposed to sound.