From School Library Journal
PreSchool-Grade 3–Stick is a young frog with a very long tongue and a hunger for adventure. One day he zaps a dragonfly, his tongue sticks to the insect, and he's carried off along the Mississippi River and into New Orleans. After being dropped onto a horse's nose and flicked back into the air, Stick attaches his tongue to a balloon bouquet for a scenic city tour. Drifting back to the country, he has several more airborne escapades before jumping onto a seagull's beak for a ride above the Gulf of Mexico. Finally dropped onto a dock, he's alone and scared. He asks a heron for help and the bird flies him home to his mother. Hungry, he zaps a firefly instead of a mosquito and takes on the bug's glow (Oops). Done in watercolors, acrylics, colored pencil, and Photoshop, the artwork is large, detailed, and colorful. The illustrations vary in size and layout, mixing close-ups of Stick with broader action shots and aerial views of the changing landscape. With a frenetic pace and loads of humor, the art perfectly conveys the frog's childlike exuberance and the story's lighthearted mood. An appended map traces Stick's journey. A fun, filled-with-thrills romp.–
Ieva Bates, Ann Arbor District Library, MI Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Little frog Stick is a daredevil who likes to explore the world on his own. One day, though, he gets a bit carried away--literally. While trying to snag a dragonfly for lunch, Stick's tongue gets stuck to the insect's belly, and he is pulled from his lily pad, straight into the air. With minimal words, Breen's appealing paint-and-pencil pictures fill in the story of Stick's adventures, as he is pulled from swamp, to neighborhood, to downtown "jazzy city" (New Orleans), and then out to the highway, where he hitches a ride with a bird, who carries him home to his comforting mother. The story is slight, but Breen generates plenty of fun and suspense in the skillfully rendered, animated pictures, many of which are presented from a bird's-eye view. A final scene, in which Stick swallows a firefly and begins to glow, will leave kids chortling, even as they may recognize themselves in young Stick, whose innocent curiosity sometimes leads to trouble.
Gillian EngbergCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
