Frog and Fly: Six Slurpy Stories
These six slurpy very short stories will tickle funny bones and make beginning readers laugh out loud. Frog loves to eat flies and in the first five chapters of this comic-style book, the clever, slurping frog uses a little wordplay and trickery to end up with a fly snack. In the sixth story, turnabout is only fair and the joke is on Frog as he gets a slurping bear surprise!
Pennsylvania Center for the Book Awards
Book Activities & Discussion Ideas
After reading the book to children, ask them what they notice about each of the stories in the book. Children are very observant and eager to share their knowledge and understanding of a story. Children may mention some of the following: that each story is numbered, there are six stories, each story is in a different background color, the words are in bubbles, there are two main characters in the story, there are some other characters like dog, pig, and bear, the word slurp is always in red with an exclamation point, the frog usually figures out a way to eat the fly until the end, the frog and the fly have eyes that are alike, the pictures look like cartoons in the newspaper, each story is a frog joke, etc. A discussion like this can help children to understand different formats in books and begin to internalize story structure.
Children will find the stories in Frog and Fly: Six Slurpy Stories very entertaining, and will ask to hear them over and over again. Explain to parents that reading for pleasure is an important part of emergent literacy. A book like Frog and Fly: Six Slurpy Stories will help children see that reading and looking at books is fun. After a first reading of the book, parents can point to each word bubble as it is read and encourage their children to repeat the word. Soon children will be reading this book independently.