Ella and the Amazing Frog Orchestra by Cassy Polimeni, illustrated by Hykie Breeze

Title: Ella and the Amazing Frog Orchestra

Author: Cassy Polimeni, illustrated by Hykie Breeze

Genre: Contemporary

Publisher: UWA Publishing

Published: 1^st July 2024

Format: Paperback

Pages: 92

Price: $15.99

Synopsis: “Did you know frogs can find their way home? It’s called a ‘homing instinct’ … no matter where they are, they know where they belong. I think I know how frogs feel.”

Eight-year-old Ella hates her new house. She wants to be back in her old house with her best friend Viv next door … until one day Ella discovers a secret pond in her neighbours’ backyard with an orchestra of frogs!

At her new school Ella meets Mai and learns about their class frog bog project. But when Ella finds out that the neighbours’ secret pond is under threat Ella and Mai must come up with a plan to save the frogs – before it’s too late!

~*~

Eight-year-old Ella and her family have moved to a new town and a new house, and she’s not happy. She doesn’t have her best friend, Viv, next door anymore, and her parents are often busy with their jobs and her younger brother, William. So, when Ella discovers a pond of frogs next door, she’s thrilled! And she meets Mai at school, who becomes her friend, and shows her the class frog pond project. All is going well, until she finds out the pond next door is under threat – so Ella and Mai come up with a plan to save the frogs – and they’ll need Ella’s whole family to help.

In this new children’s novel from Cassy Polimeni is the start of a new series celebrating friendship and the environment, and the small things people can do help their local environment where they can. It also examines the upheaval of moving for a child, as we see Ella struggling with the move. Ella also struggles with starting a new school – I could see how overwhelmed she was, because there was a sense that everything was happening quite fast for Ella, and her nervousness comes through eloquently, so younger readers who have experienced this or are about go through a big change in their live will see something relatable in Ella. She’s a character who is allowed to be worried and awkward, because she is still working out the world and she is human, so like many of us, she’s constantly learning about the world.

The start of this new series for younger readers deals with some big things in accessible ways for child readers – moving, making new friends, new school, and the environment, and makes it entertaining as well. Cassy has succinctly told an engaging story about a young girl and her diverse community and friends as they work towards saving the local wildlife – in this instance, frogs. In doing so, Cassy is introducing children to habitat and environment preservation for children aged five to eight, who are starting to read alone, or reading with their class or family, and want to know more about what they can do. Saving the environment is hard – and there’s so much to do, that sometimes, the things that people can do are just small, and that’s okay – we can only do what we are capable of doing or able to do. That’s part of the magic of this new junior fiction series, because it gives it its hook and theme amidst a broad world of junior fiction to make it stand out. It is also a great novel to get kids to start reading independently, and one that they will connect with in different ways, depending on what they see as important in the book.

The other thing that makes this book special is that Ella has a special interest in nature, and uses her creativity to find a solution to a small problem in her local area, reflecting the creativity that people are finding in their own communities to create small changes where big changes may not be possible. This aspect highlights that even the small changes can have an impact, because it can all build up to something big. It is Ella’s determination to help the frogs that drives the narrative in this fun and exciting novel, with its quiet determination to teach readers something new and about how they can make a difference in their world. I enjoyed reading this book, and the rest of the series should be lots of fun too.

I hope readers pick up this book, and enjoy it, and are inspired to make a difference in their worlds by it.