The Frog Squad: Dessert Disaster by Kate and Jol Temple

Title: The Frog Squad: Dessert Disaster

Author: Kate and Jol Temple, Shiloh Gordon

Genre: Fiction

Publisher: HarperCollins Australia

Published: 3^rd April 2024

Format: Paperback

Pages: 144

Price: $16.99

Synopsis: Step into a top-secret world where frogs don’t just eat flies, they eat danger! This is FROG SQUAD!

Frog Squad comes to the rescue of a mega tanker in distress — and it’s full of ice-cream! Will these brave rescue frogs be fast enough to stop Professor Cain and The Organisation of Amphibious Devious Scoundrels (TOADS) from controlling the global supply of ice-cream?

Streaming now on Frogflix!

~*~

Join the Frog Squad as they take on TOAD – The Organisation of Amphibious Devious Scoundrels – a dastardly group that wants to control the global supply of ice cream.

Yes, that’s right. Captain Tony Rowley and his squad of frogs – Dr Jilly Gilly, Agent Quito Gonzalez, Sergeant Nelson Hewitt, and radio operator Roger Rogers are facing off against Professor Cain and his TOADS Henchmen during a reality TV show when TOADS and Professor Cain try to take out a mega tanker to get all the ice cream! A reality show? Well, Frog Squad needs money. So the book is set out like a reality show – with the advertisement segments acting as chapter breaks, and the characters speaking to the camera and the reader.

This story is action-packed as Frog Squad faces off against the horrid Professor Cain, and is filled with froggy puns and plays on words as the ice cream disaster happens live, with Dr Jilly Gilly as the scientific expert, highlighting the danger of the ice cream spilling into the Indian Ocean, aligning it with an oil spill and the dangers that an oil spill can cause to the sea and its inhabitants – but in this story, ice cream takes the place of oil. Yet both are shown to have the same outcomes. I think this was cleverly done to teach children about oil spills and the dangers that they pose to the ocean, and allows the Frog Squad to use ingenuity and inventiveness to stop the spill so they can beach the tanker. And this is all brought to life spectacularly by Shiloh Gordon’s illustrations.

Oh, and in the froggy world, this show is going to be on Frogflix, and this series will provide humans a chance to watch the show. The adverts used in the book suit the world well, from Croak-a-Cola, to burgers and a range of other things that frogs will find useful, this was effectively used to show readers where they can take a break if they need to – much like the end of chapters in other books, or advert breaks on television. This makes the book feel interactive and fun, and shows younger readers that books are joyous, magical, and that there is something unique and fun for all readers to discover. I loved that this book also used Kate and Jol’s typical humour, which has grown in all their books and comes to life in this one wonderfully. Another great book for readers aged six and over.