Genre 1- Mo Willems

Mo Willems, City Dog, Country Frog (New York: Hyperion Books, 2010) 1-40

ISBN 13: 978-1423103004

PLOT SUMMARY

Meeting new friends is always exciting, and in Mo Willems City Dog, Country Frog, the City Dog makes a new friend with a Frog from the country. Their friendship blossoms and grows throughout the seasons while they share games and stories together. Although coming from different backgrounds and cultures, they find common ground in their friendship. As we read on though, Country Frog begins to age. When City Dog returns for another season of games and friendship, he sees that Country Frog is nowhere to be found. City Dog feels as if all hope is lost, but he eventually finds a new friend in Country Squirrel.

CRITICAL ANALYSIS

Mo Willems (author of the story) and Jon Muth (illustrator) collaborate to put together yet another book that hits a home run with kids of all backgrounds. Instead of trying to write to a specific audience, they gracefully tell the story of friendship. It can be argued that the maturity of this story is not suitable for younger audiences. Inferencing, which Willems requires of his readers in this story, is a skill refined at a 4^th and 5^th grade level. Although this book requires me, as a 3^rd grade teacher, to explain quite a bit to my students, I believe that they will learn to appreciate this book’s story the older they get.

The illustrations, to the reader, look like the actual paintings Muth created, not prints or recreations of those paintings. Therefore, readers can feel the intimate setting that this book has so fantastically created. City Dog and Country Frog did not meet in the city, where people and other animals would constantly be bothering them. Rather, they met at a country pond, a peaceful place without disruptions and distractions so that they could focus on the friendship at hand. Due to the importance of setting in this book, it is easy to see why Muth used such intimate illustrating techniques.

REVIEW EXCERPT(S)

* School Library Journal: “This understated picture book allows plenty of room for young readers to interpret the animals' feelings for themselves and perhaps discuss their own emotions”

* Booklist: “The pictures are imbued with hope and happiness…’

CONNECTIONS

* City Dog, Country Frog tells a story of friendship. A teacher could incorporate pin pals as a supplement to this story because writing to pin pal would mean students communicating to friends that, like country frog and city dog, would have come from different lives to find friendship.