Green Wilma, Frog in Space

June 1, 2009
K-Gr 1-In perfect rhyme, a pop-eyed frog on a log (Wilma) embarks on her favorite adventure: chasing a plump fly. In hot pursuit, she fails to notice the purple spaceship that lands at her pond. The alien child who drops out of the ship looks a lot like Wilma, only blue. So when Wilma is robotically grabbed and stuffed into a space suit for takeoff, nobody realizes that she's not little Blooger. Her wild enthusiasm for chasing flies is what sets the resolution, and the spaceship, in raucous motion. When Wilma's greenness is discovered, "Robot doctors tried to find out/what the problem was./And only Wilma noticed a/familiar little buzz./She chased it all around the room/and out into the ship./She hopped across the flight controls/and things began to tip." The illustrations explode across the pages with frantic innocence. The only characters that don't look 100 percent sweet are the alien robots. Even the flies are adorable. Onboard, the robot waiter offers cool glasses of pond water while aliens munch Martian bugs that look like large crustaceans. There's a deliciously scary close-up as Wilma is examined by the robot MDs. To say that the pictures complement the text is like declaring that the Sun complements the Earth. Children will adore "Wilma"."Susan Weitz, formerly at Spencer-Van Etten School District, Spencer, NY"

Copyright 2009 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 1, 2009
Preschool-G The froggy fly chaser introduced in Green Wilma (1993) takes an unexpected ride when she and her buzzing prey are snatched up in error by a pair of similarly pop-eyed alien parents. After a wild interstellar flight, the spacecraft returns to earth, where the relieved purple aliens are reunited with their stranded offspring and Wilma clambers back onto her accustomed logwondering if it was all a dream. The cast members look more like blobby, shell-less M&Ms than frogs in the cartoon illustrations, but budding astronauts will enjoy both the quick and silly trip and the dedicated way Wilma keeps her eye on the fly.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2009, American Library Association.)