The Story of Frog Belly Rat Bone

by Timothy Basil Ering, Timothy Basil Ering (Illustrator)

Overview

“Frog Belly plants the idea that with some strategy, good communication, and goodwill, you can grow wonderful things.”— Portland Press Herald

Once upon a time, in a gray endless place called Cementland, a boy finds a treasure box. It’s filled with tiny specks and a wrinkled note that says, “Put these wondrous riches in the earth and enjoy.” But a special treasure requires a special guardian, so the boy conjures a creature to protect the specks: Frog Belly Rat Bone. With subtle, delicate tones, fantastical figures, and bursts of glowing color, the surreal artwork and hand-lettered text of Timothy Basil Ering’s picture book debut exude all the whimsy of an inspired imagination.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780763666613
Publisher:	Candlewick Press
Publication date:	02/06/2013
Edition description:	Anniversary
Pages:	48
Product dimensions:	10.18(w) x 10.08(h) x 0.50(d)
Age Range:	4 - 8 Years

About the Author

Timothy Basil Ering is the illustrator of the Newbery Medal-winning The Tale of Despereaux by Kate DiCamillo and Finn Throws a Fit! by David Elliott. He is also the author-illustrator of Necks Out for Adventure! He lives in Massachusetts.

Editorial Reviews

Timothy Basil Ering's THE STORY OF FROG BELLY RAT BONE provides a dark-colored picturebook with handwritten pages as it tells of a boy's find of a strange, wonderful box filled with magic.
—Children's Bookwatch

. . . the art and the design are extraordinary. Ering's combination of hand-lettered text and scribbly, muddy, scratchy pictures looks like a collaboration between Tim Burton and Ralph Steadman (in a good mood).
—Booklist

The big revelation here is newcomer Timothy Basil Ering's jaw-dropping illustrations: his moody, dramatically layered acrylics plunge us into a surreal otherworld about to flower.
—FamilyFun

This compelling fantasy with whimsical illustrations celebrates the natural world and the world of imagination. It's a find for Earth Day.
—Yellow Brick Road

Ering's illustrations ooze personality . . . FROG BELLY RAT BONE offers a rich harvest for adults and children alike.
—Star Tribune

From the Publisher

Quirky illustrations belie a conventional plot in Ering's debut, about a stick-figure boy living in "a dull, gray, endless place called Cementland." Among rusty, dripping pipes and poured-concrete slabs of beige and blue, the boy finds "greasy toaster ovens, broken TVs, and wet smelly socks. But no treasure." One day, he discovers a copper-green trunk packed with colorful envelopes and cryptic instructions: "Put my wondrous riches into the earth and enjoy." He opens an envelope and puts the contents-"hundreds of tiny gray specks"-into the ground. Then, "he gathered those wet smelly socks. He found moldy pillow stuffing and scraggly wires. He patched, buttoned, sewed, and zipped." His bulging creation, a benevolent and distended talking scarecrow named Frog Belly Rat Bone, guards the specks from a rabbit, rat and fruit fly. In time, Cementland blooms with flowers and vegetables, and the junkyard of soupy grays yields to an explosion of color. Ering loads the pages with expressive smears, splatters, squiggles and kinky lines, and the book's matte, embossed cover emphasizes the tactile quality of his art. Yet despite its edgy-looking visuals and scratchy hand-lettered text, this allegory is as overstuffed with sentiment as Frog Belly himself. It advises patience in sowing the seeds of change, but takes a naïve, idealizing view of childhood and delivers a message in place of a story. Ages 4-7. (Apr.) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

Shrieking "Parable!" at every page turn, this takes its design concept from another, arguably more lasting parable. Featuring an embossed cover with faux-stitching up the side that uneasily recalls Boris Karloff’s makeup job from Frankenstein, this wildly self-conscious offering presents the story of an unnamed boy who wanders the reaches of Cementland. This boy is very special--resembling nothing so much as a red-and-white-striped trashcan with stick arms and legs, he roams in search of treasure. One day he finds "a strange and wonderful box. Attached to the box was a wrinkled note, which said, ‘Put my wondrous riches into the earth and enjoy.’ " Predictably enough, when the boy sprinkles the riches--tiny gray specks contained within many brightly colored packets--into the earth, mysterious robbers come overnight and steal them. So the boy manufactures a living scarecrow of wire, old socks, and underwear and dubs it Frog Belly Rat Bone. Together the boy and Frog Belly Rat Bone make friends with the three potential robbers, a rat, a rabbit, and a fruit fly, and win them over to the mysteries of gardening. Smeary full-bleed gray-green acrylics modulate to smeary red-orange-pink acrylics as the "wondrous treasure" sprouts until "Cementland is filled with colors now!" Over-designed, overburdened, overbearing nod to easy environmentalism aimed directly at the Grandma market. (Picture book. 4-8)

Kirkus Reviews