How to Be a Frog Millionaire

Alison Mews is co-ordinator of the Centre for Instructional Services at
Memorial University of Newfoundland.

Fourteen-year-old Will has been dumped at his grandma’s cottage for
the summer. Also staying for the summer are his 11-year-old twin
cousins, who set out to make his life a misery, and largely succeed.
Will spends most of his time angry—with his mom for abandoning him,
with his cousins for their malicious pranks, and with his grandma for
treating him like he’s still 11. His scheme to make enough money for a
wakeboard by selling frogs to a bait shop doesn’t go quite as planned,
but it does give him a focus. Things improve when he befriends Kyle, a
“cool dude” with whom he can hang out.

This second instalment in the Deer Lake series is a fast-paced read,
with reduced vocabulary and sentence structure aimed at reluctant
readers who are in Grades 4 to 6 but who have a reading level of Grade
3. It includes a glossary, but both the choice of words and the
definitions themselves are odd. There is plenty of action, but other
than an initial sympathy for Will’s plight, it’s difficult to
develop an affinity for his character. He continues to feel sorry for
himself, and does little to effect positive changes. Rather than
learning to take the mischievous twins in stride, he outsmarts them,
considering them “suckers.” Overall, the book was unsatisfactory to
this reviewer, but perhaps the targeted male non-readers will find it
amusing. Not a first-choice purchase.