This Frog's Extra Pounds Make Him Grow Very Round

One of my favorite songs, especially for sing-along situations such as marshmallow roasts and long car trips, is a sprightly tune entitled The Rattlin' Bog that was introduced to me by the Irish Rovers. I love to listen to the battered old tape on which Will Millar, my favorite impish, rambling Rover, preserved in his early twenties, breathlessly recites the final progression of items in this lively reel: "Hair on the bug and the bug on the leaf and the leaf on the twig and the twig on the branch and the branch on the limb and the limb on the tree and the tree in the bog and the bog down in the valley-o!" I immediately thought of this song when I picked up Karma Wilson's A Frog in the Bog. As it happened, the book had more in even common with the song than I expected...

A Frog in the Bog is also a progressive story. The frog who sits on the log in the bog eats something. Then he eats two bigger somethings. Then three somethings that are bigger still, and Wilson reminds us of the contents of his stomach each time by running through the list, starting with the most recent addition. Like The Very Hungry Caterpillar, this is a ravenous creature, and he just keeps getting bigger. But is he big enough to deal with an animal enormous enough to eat him?

Wilson's books generally contain a recurring refrain, and this one does too: "The frog grows a little bit bigger." But that's not the only repetition. The story builds up to its climax with the count of the critters, so the first half of the book is very repetitious indeed. But that adds to the fun here, and we wonder just how long the frog can go on eating larger and larger prey. Surely he must have a limit; he can't keep expanding forever!

Joan Rankin's watercolors remind me of the artwork in Non Sequitur. There's definitely something off-beat about her style, and most of her creatures look slightly demented. But because this story is even less involved than most of the ones Wilson has penned, it's up to Rankin to spice up the tale with her insects and arthropods, who are none too happy about being sucked into the frog's mouth. His eating them doesn't seem very plausible. In my favorite illustration, he slurps up four gaily dressed slugs who look like some sort of miniature royalty. Each of them is about his size, but like Kirby he just keeps getting bigger to accommodate this "food". You'd think the slugs would have plenty of opportunity to escape his advances, but they're so slow I guess they can't get away, but they hardly satisfy his hunger, because as with his other snacks, the frog doesn't digest them. They just sit around moping in his increasingly cramped stomach.

I thought A Frog in the Bog might be getting a little gruesome for my tastes, but while it's almost entirely about creatures eating other creatures, it doesn't turn out to be macabre at all. A little icky, maybe, but more likely to provoke giggles than gasps in little ones. The Rovers' bog will always be my favorite. But Wilson's bog is pretty spiffy too.