Fuse 8 n’ Kate: Red-Eyed Tree Frog by Joy Cowley, ill. Nic Bishop

Here in Illinois the cicadas are truly beginning to emerge en masse. As such, I was kind of hoping I might be able to find a book that speaks to this. Alas, Cicada Symphony by Sue Fleiss (illustrated by Gareth Lucas) is just barely a year old. So what’s the next best course of action? Locate some other red-eyed creature found in trees, of course! Now finding old nonfiction picture books with the potential to be called “classic” are few and far between, thanks to our twenty year rule. Fortunately, the farther into the future we tread, the more possibilities there are to choose between. And what better 1999 informational title could one choose today than good old Red-Eyed Tree Frog? Written by an author who has had a HECK of a life (you gotta check out her Wikipedia page sometime). We discuss which came first with this book, the photos or the text and why sometimes you just gotta get a second moth shot (as opposed to a shot of Malört).

Listen to the whole show here on Soundcloud or download it through iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify, Google Play, PlayerFM, Audible, Amazon Music, or your preferred method of podcast selection.

Show Notes:

Didn’t believe me about the Malört with cicada shots they’re selling in Chicago? Well, believe it. Why you would ruin a perfectly delicious cicada with Malört I will never understand.

“How is it cute when it looks like there are stitches over his eyelids, sewing his eyes together?” And right there, the book lost Kate.

And in this sequence she thinks that the one eye closed looks like it was “gouged out in a bar fight”.

Quoth Kate, “Man, I’d love to see it try, though.”

For Kate, these next eyeballs strike her as even creepier. It looks like a cartoon of a bug. It also kind of looks like a Guillermo del Toro commissioned the Muppet Studios to create this for him.

This is Kate’s favorite photo. On the one hand you’ve the snake’s tongue practically flicking the frog’s foot. On the other, the frog has this happy little smile on its face as it escapes.

Frog knuckles! Betcha it could throw a really nice fastball.

Alas. Kate noticed that though these two moth pictures are next to one another in the book, this is clearly a different moth in the second shot. That’s too bad, but nature’s hard to photograph, folks. Sometimes you just gotta get a second moth.

Kate Recommends: The Millicent Quibb School of Etiquette for Young Ladies of Mad Science by Kate McKinnon

Betsy Recommends: Starved Rock State Park

Filed under: Fuse 8 n' Kate