Can Dragons and Frogs Be Friends?

2014 Version

Foreward Review 2014

Rounded characters communicating through letters

convey strong messages about courage, peace, and gratitude.

Trudi Carter’s debut,  Can Dragons and Frogs be Friends?, is an epistolary fantasy about reconciliation. Recounted through letters between Forest Squirrel and Beach Bird, the pleasant story reveals

the longstanding divide between Throckmorton

and his wife

(Dragons who survive by eating frogs)

and the frogs of Deep Pond, who avoid them.

When Throckmorton needs help saving his soon-to-hatched child, a daring rescue spearheaded by Melville the frog results in peace.

This book offers clear lessons in gratitude.  

At the heart of the plot lies the impending birth

of a new dragon who is expected to further

threaten the frogs.

Knowing that a dragon egg

takes 300 hundred years to hatch, the carefree frogs

make little time to confront this dilemma.

Forest Squirrel shares his concerns with Beach Bird,

whose sage words are nearly always prophetic,

until an unexpected turn of events transforms

 the main characters.

Arranged in two page chapters – each featuring Forest Squirrel’s letter and Beach Bird’s response on the facing page -and amusing postscripts about

their respective couriers, -Owl and Pelican – the tale breezes through the centuries.

At one point, Forest Squirrel remarks,

“It has been 200 years since I have written you.”

Presenting the dragons’ sudden change of heart as a handed down record rather than through the eyes of either the dragons or the frogs removes

 emotional immediacy yet suggests

the truce was historic.

Of the letters, the freshest ones detail the friends’ lives in the Great Forest and Ocean Wave City allowing them to become fuller characters instead of curious commentators. Less compelling letters stick to telling the events.

…

Can Dragons and Frogs Be Friends? turns the predatory relationship into an imaginative opportunity for shifting views and beginning anew.

With secondary themes of courage,

 Dragon Mama’s ferocity, and

implied forgiveness for the past, the book yields rich potential for discussion.

Reviewed by Karen Rigby

May 8, 2014

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