Timothy Basil EringCritiques

The unexpected ending! We liked this overall, but the ending was abrupt! At first I thought there was a misprint of the pages!

Love the illustrations and the beautiful story. Music is a wonderful friend. :)

The little boy creates a monster to protect his treasure from the thieves. The monster shows the little boy what to do his treasure, and informs them that they are remarkable seeds. He teaches patience and forgiveness to the little boy and thieves and how wonderful the treasure actually is. I love how the illustrations stayed dark and dreary until the flowers begin to bloom and the pages filled with color.

longish story, with music and a duckling and a happy ending

Once upon a time, in a dull, gray endless place called Cementland, there lived a very special boy who wished to find a treasure. After much searching among piles of greasy toaster ovens and wet smelly socks, he spies a box filled with specks and a wrinkled note that says, "Put these wondrous riches in the earth and enjoy." Horrified to learn that thieves are after his treasure, the boy scrounges the junkyard and conjures a creature to stand guard - a scarecrowlike gardener with crooked bony arms, a giant belly, a jaunty crown, and preternatural wisdom: Frog Belly Rat Bone, king and protector of the specks.With subtle, delicate tones, fantastical figures, and bursts of glowing color, the surreal artwork and hand-lettered text of Tim Ering’s picture book debut exude all the whimsy of an inspired imagination - and the wonders of a natural world that awaits discovery, even in Cementland.

50 months - O loves this story and the illustrations. We both love saying "Frog Belly Rat Bone"... Just silly.

Quite the colorful swashbuckling adventure. Great illustrations and an appealing message amongst all the frenetic silliness.

Frog Belly Rat Bone is the story of a little boy who finds a hidden treasure and builds a monster to protect it. The boy learns from his monster that it takes patience to discover the true value of the treasure. The colors of the story remain dark and grey until the flowers bloom and everybody is friends, just to show the beauty of the virtues of patience and forgiveness.½

Besides the extraordinary art, "The Story of Frog Belly Rat Bone" reminded me of the themes of Dr. Seuss', "The Lorax." A good book to read to students and teach them about the importance and good that tress and other living organisms bring to our environment.

Dark and brooding but also quite charming.

Children need to be reminded now and again that being different from the group can be a great thing! in this case it saved edwin wiggleskin and his family from being cooked in a pot. Children will relate to the family element in this book even if they dont understand the underwater elements.

Cementland is full of garbage and run down building, and a little boy. The little boy's only wish is to find treasure in this wasteland. When he finds a secret box of treasure he has to also build Frog Belly Rat Bone out of trash to guard this precious treasure from thieves. Frog Belly Rat Bone teaches the thieves and the boy just how special this treasure is and what to do with it. The treasure brings color, happiness, and a bountiful meal to them. Interesting illustrations, dark and dreary progresses to colorful and happy.

A nice companion piece to this classic. The author captures the story (although a few things are altered or left out) and the voice of Victor Frankenstein very well.
While we are removed from the "action" by reading the story in the mode of a journal, there is still a feeling of intimacy here. The words are written artfully to convey Victor's emotions. And reading something written in cursive, in journal format, and having to strain to see the words in parts that are often dark and scribbly, all lends to a feeling of understanding Victor and his emotions. As a note, the book also includes the text in an addendum for those who can't read cursive (which I am assuming most younger people would need.) It is simply typed in blocks and would not be the same thing as reading the book in its intended form.

Loved the artwork. Dark and smeared in the beginning, colorful flowers at the end.

In a world of concrete and garbage a little boy finds a great treasure and builds a monster to guard it from thieves. The monster not only guards the treasure but shows the boy and the thieves how to make life bloom.

This is a children's picture book.

I have such a soft spot for these new "cool" illustrators. This wild style of drawing makes the story pop to life and the message is a great one for little urbanites.

This is sort of Golem story. The monster saves the treasure (seeds) but teaches the boy how to plant the seeds and bring back life to the city. The wild illustrations were a turn off to some of my first graders, but was so exciting to many others.

Read Me!!
cool almost-creepy illustrations and a simple but not simplistic moral. Also a free bookmark in the hardcover.

Pretty. This is an interesting work, very straightforwardly Mary Shelly's Frankenstein, but with the narrative confined to journal entries penned, ostensibly, by the mad doctor. Beautiful, evocative pen sketches, lovely, age-stained design. The medium manages, however, always to fall short of allowing you to become truly involved with the story or characters. Just as reading the diary of a stranger would be, the senstaion is of reading a story from which one is very distantly removed- there is no immediacy to it.
Otherwise, a very nice book.