Tissue, Please!

My child loved this book. My friends loved this book. The writing is good. The pictures are great. My child is really into reading and loves to make snuffy sounds. Does not use a tissue. Makes me crazy. The paintings of the bikes are awesome. The frog friends are cool. The artist highlights details in the colors...like the halo on the nose blowing frog which I find pretty darned impressive. My child may begin to use a tissue now.

A quintet of frogs bicycle, dance, and sneeze together in this book for kids about wiping noses. A book about wiping noses?! It's actually more interesting than it sounds, and not nearly as "gross" as it could have been, thanks to the restrained illustrations and funny story. In Lisa Kopelke's acrylic drawings, the frogs seem puffy and furry-- as if somehow sheep got mixed into the gene pool. The frogs have big expressive eye and eyelids, and long, long legs with huge webbed feet. At first, they look kind of ugly, but they grow on you-so to speak. And when they sneeze and "snuffle," clouds of steam come from their noses. They also wipe their noses on their arms. After school, the frog friends bicycle to-what else?-a dance class to practice for their recital. The frog named "Frog" still had a runny nose, which made it difficult to dance. `Schnorrrkle!' Frog rang out. When his friends heard him, they remembered their noses were runny too." The five frogs become "one huge chorus of sniffles and snuffles," and they once again wipe their noses on their arms. Their teacher, Miss Tutu, "was so disgusted, all she could say was `Yuck!'" Again, there is nothing disgusting in Kopelke's drawing of the scene. At home, Frog's mother gives him a tissue when he beings to snuffle. He is positively amazed at how well it works! In a clever illustration, Kopelke shows the clouds lifting away around Frog-he has seen the light! It's just in the nick of time too, because Frog's nose begins to run again at the dance recital, right in the middle of a grand plie! HE reaches for a tissue, incorporates it into the dance, and voila-- by George he's got it! Ms. Kopelke draws a wonderful overhead spread showing the frogs dancing and disposing of their tissues in a combination of ballet and basketball. The improvisation is so triumphant, "from that day on the Dance of the Tissue-Box Fairies was the big finale of every dance recital. This is a superbly illustrated and original story. It easily stands as an entertaining book for all kids, but it's also an instructive tool for sniffly ones who haven't discovered the joy of tissues. The pictures and language are in good taste, and the tone is appropriately light. The author's website is located at www.lisakopelke. She's also written a "Frog" manners book, "Excuse Me," which was a Children's Book-of-the-Month Club Featured Selection.

Clever story about frogs and their runny noses. I like how it gives a message on 'nose manners' without being preachy. Beautiful illustrations and cute dialouge between sniffling frogs!

This book is a sequel to Excuse Me!, using the same set of froggy characters, quirky illustrations, and subtle humor. Like the first book (which dealt with burping), Tissue, Please! is a book on using good manners, even when body functions get out of hand (literally, in this book - yuck!) The main character, Frog, is having a difficult time with his runny nose and doesn't know about using tissues. He grosses out several adults, before his mother finally introduces him to tissues. There are a few funny scenes (like during the ballet, when frog deftly swoops up a tissue en plie to wipe his nose and the other froggy dancers follow suit. As anyone who has worked with a class full of very young children knows, many do not know about blowing their nose; this book provides humorous, yet delicately handled, instruction. This is a great book to use during the fall and winter flu seasons, perhaps coupled with a nonfiction germ book for young children, like Germs Make Me Sick (Reading Rainbow Books).