The Mystery of Darwin's Frog - Hardcover

Crump, Marty

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1590788648 ISBN 13: 9781590788646

Publisher: Astra Young Readers, 2013

Synopsis

A frog full of tadpoles? Impossible! Here, for the first time, is the strange but true story of Darwin’s frog. After Charles Darwin discovered the frog in 1834, other researchers found that one of his specimens was packed full of tadpoles. Was the frog a cannibal, or perhaps a rare species that gave birth to live young instead of laying eggs? No. He was a male, holding the tadpoles safe in his vocal sac while they morphed into froglets. And the surprises didn’t stop there. Author and frog scientist Marty Crump mines her firsthand experiences studying Darwin’s frog to tell the fascinating story for young readers. Award-winning illustrators Steve Jenkins and Edel Rodriguez lend their art to a mix of beautiful photographs. Young readers will be enthralled by this story of real science, full of strange surprises.

About this title

About the Author:

Martha L. 'Marty' Crump, PhD, is a behavioral ecologist who has studied Darwin's frogs in their natural habitat in Chile. She has written six books, two of them for young readers. Her previous children's book for Boyds Mills Press, Mysteries of the Komodo Dragon, was named a Best Book of the Year by Bank Street College of Education. She lives in Logan, UT.

Steve Jenkins has received numerous awards and critical praise for his artwork and innovative book design. His titles include Billions of Years, Amazing Changes; Actual Size; Prehistoric Actual Size; What Do You Do with a Tail Like This?; Life on Earth: The Story of Evolution; Sisters & Brothers; Move!; Hottest Coldest Highest Deepest; and many others. His books have sold more than one million copies worldwide. He lives in Boulder, CO.

Edel Rodriquez was born in Havana, Cuba, and studied painting at Pratt Institute and Hunter College. His work has appeared in five picture books, on stamps for the US Postal Service, and on posters for films and Broadway shows. He is a regular contributor to the New Yorker magazine and was an art director at Time magazine for more than a decade.

From School Library Journal:

Gr 5-7-Most frog species give parenting the go-bye after egg-laying and fertilization, but a select number of these amphibious hoppers take their nurturing skills seriously. One of these "caring" species is Rhinoderma darwinii, an inch-long frog discovered by Charles Darwin in Chile in 1834, while on his expedition aboard the Beagle. Other scientists investigated little Rhinoderma from time to time over the years, discovering that the males slurp up their almost-hatched or newly hatched tadpoles, brood them in their vocal sacs, and perhaps even feed them with substances released by the lining of the sac. Crump entered the Rhinoderma arena of investigation after years of work on other South American frog species, and in clear, readable prose she describes the earlier investigations of this intriguing frog and records her own efforts to document how it lives in the wild. She discusses her findings and goes on to present the problems facing not only Darwin's frogs, but also frogs in general-loss of habitat, pollution, and the assault of the lethal Bd fungus. The book is aglow with clear color photos and some great artwork. Team this with Laurence Pringle's fine Frogs! Strange and Wonderful (Boyds Mills, 2012), Nic Bishop's colorful Frogs (Scholastic, 2008), and Mark W. Moffett's eye-catching Face to Face with Frogs (National Geographic, 2008) for a fascinating unit, or, for more advanced frog lovers, with Sandra Markle's sterling The Case of the Vanishing Golden Frogs (Millbrook, 2012) and Pamela Turner's superb The Frog Scientist (Houghton, 2009). Eye-catching and thought-provoking.-Patricia Manning, formerly at Eastchester Public Library, NYα(c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

About this edition

• Publisher: Astra Young Readers
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 1590788648
• ISBN 13: 9781590788646
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 40
• Illustrator: Jenkins Steve, Rodriguez Edel