Toads on Toast was published by Kids Can Press Ltd in 2012. It was written by Linda Bailey and illustrated by Colin Jack.
Fox is sitting next to the pond pondering how he can change his boring routine of eating the same ol’ fat toads over and over. He goes to the cookbook store and gets a new recipe book that recommends small, young and tender toads. He catches a whole bunch of them and is about to cook them until Mamma Toad hops in the way. She teaches Fox a new recipe that doesn’t use toads, the little ones are saved and there’s a happy ending.
I can think of part two of this story. Mamma Chicken stopping Fox from eating eggs.
There’s a lot of good stuff going on with the illustrations in this story. The shapes of the houses, background characters and the chaos of a whole bunch of toads on a table are exceptionally well drawn.
I felt the story and writing was alright. A lot of the words are written in italics especially with the narration.
The word ‘Gee’ is used in this story in the text... this reminded me of an old friend from New Zealand who would get a chuckle at this word (apparently this isn’t used much in NZ and Australia).
Toads on Toast is a fairly pleasant story to read but it really doesn’t have much tension. I wish the Fox was a little bit more greedy or sinister.
