Canadian Picture Books
from Canadian Literature: a Quarterly of Criticism and Review
Bradley McGogg, the Very Fine Frog. Tundra Books
Reviewed by Judith Saltman
Tim Beiser (Author) and Rachel Berman (Illustrator)
Bradley McGogg, the Very Fine Frog is a paperback issue of a 2008 publication. Beiser’s comic verse in rhyming couplets and catchy rhythm begs to be read aloud in this classic anthropomorphized animal fable of a hungry frog’s journey through his animal friends’ culinary tastes and talents, with the final return home and realization that his taste for his bog bugs is just right. Usually slightly nonsensical stories are matched by cartoon art. Berman’s fine draughtsmanship, however, is a comic realism blended with fine realist imagery and sets the tale in a British fantasy world of Edwardian clothing, class, and behaviour. The style recalls early twentieth-century classic children’s books with finely realized Beatrix Potteresque detail and echoes of the shadowy fields and woods of Arthur Rackham.
From http://canlit.ca/reviews/canadian_picture_books , accessed 24 Apr. 2012.
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