Frog Squad: Sink or Swim by Kate and Jol Temple, illustrated by Shiloh Gordon

Title: Frog Squad: Sink or Swim

Author: Kate and Jol Temple, illustrated by Shiloh Gordon

Genre: Humour

Publisher: HarperCollins Australia

Published: 2^nd April 2025

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 dives into the treacherous waters of the Bermuda Triangle to find Captain Froggy Longbottom’s shipwreck. It’s filled with stolen treasure, including the world’s largest pearl! But The Organisation of Amphibious Devious Scoundrels (TOADS) is hunting for the treasure, too. Will the brave rescue frogs reach it first, or will they be swallowed by quicksand?

Streaming now on Frogflix!

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The Frog Squad are back – and they’re going up against their vile enemy, The Organisation of Amphibious Devious Scoundrels, led by the awful Professor Buford Cain. This time, they’re off to the Bermuda Triangle. Yes, that’s the one! The Frog Squad need to find Captain Froggy Longbottom’s shipwreck and its treasure before TOADS does – but first, the frogs have to get past quicksand.

The third book in the Frog Squad series is the world but not as we know it. In the froggy and amphibian world, these are the heroes, in their own reality show. It’s filled with more puns and jokes, with ‘advert breaks’ acting as breaks between chapters or segment. These give readers a good place to stop and hop around – unless you really want to leapfrog through the story in one sitting. It combines comics and prose to tell the story, which works really well as the frogs search for the ship and their missing friend. This makes it a great junior fiction series, but it also a lot of fun for older readers who want a fun read or need a break from any heavier reading they have been doing. It is perfect for that, and perfect for a group read as well. The story and characters feel like a kind of performance at times – something quite different to what is often out there. I think this can make it stand out because it’s not quite what people expect when they pick up this series. But it works. It works so well, it’s quite easy to just read this in one sitting if you want to or can.

Another fun aspect is the fun that it pokes at reality TV and television advertising. So much reality TV is dramatic, and this takes it to the next level – this time with quicksand! That perilous substance that many children of the eighties and nineties – and even before, will have seen in many movies and TV shows as a danger. It’s things like this that Kate and Jol use cleverly in their stories to introduce younger readers to the things that terrified their parents, and that bring a smile of nostalgia to the faces of older readers. It works really well and I think there are things that readers of all ages will appreciate.

As this series goes on, things continue to get slimier and slipperier as the Frog Squad continues to face off against TOADS – where will it end? What will the final battle entail? Did the frogs really find the pearl they were after? And what do TOADS really want other than world domination? Well, read on and find out, because this is a frogtastic series for everyone to enjoy.

So if you’re a fan of this series, hop to it and read the latest installment!