The February Book of the Month, "City Dog, Country Frog" is a wonderful book about friendship through the seasons. Mo Willems' spare, poignant text and Jon J. Muth's expressive watercolors team up to tell a story that will resonate with reader's of all ages. The book is bursting with themes of season, animals, and a main focus on friendship. Friends come into our lives from unexpected directions, friendships go through hard times, and friendships sometimes end. This theme is explored in this book using a story of a dog befriending a frog. While enjoying his new country freedom on a warm spring day, City Dog meets Country Frog who is sitting on a rock. City Dog asks what Country Frog is doing and he says, " Waiting for a friend..But you'll do." the pair of them quickly became great friends. Although they come from different areas, they enjoyed running and playing games together through the spring, summer, and fall. When winter arrives everything changes and City Dog learns a hard lesson about how friendships change over time.
After reading this book it reminds us of the motto "Friendship is essential to the soul!" In the process of being friends, we teach each other about our different worlds, and we may even create a new one together. People that we love sometimes leave us or move on in a wide variety of ways that may have nothing to do with us. We miss the people we've lost, but they leave their imprint on us. As educators,w e can encourage our students to think critically about what makes a friend, and challenge them to make a new friend with the possibility of new discoveries.
In closing, "City Dog, Country Frog" allows students to build on their beliefs of the seasons and the concept of friendship, the natural course relationships take, and transitions in people's lives. This book shows the benefits of a valuable friendship and how a friendship can positively impact one's emotions and life. This is an opportunity for children to relate to a new found friend in relation to their own life experiences. The children may react by yelling names of their friends, telling stories about their friend, and things they do together. Enjoy!
Look how some classes celebrated the book:
