The Wizard

I love Jack Prelutsky, AKA The Children's Poet Laureate. Most of his books that I've read have been themed poetry collections. This is just one narrative poem, and not a very lengthy one at that.

The wizard of the title resembles the Dumbledore/Gandalf model, but he's not very nice or very ambitious. Instead, he spends his day turning a bullfrog into one thing after another. Perhaps he's locked inside that tower (we're never told) that looks over a normal-looking suburban neighborhood. At the end it's implied that he might use his magic on the children playing down below.

Originally published in 1976, the copy I read has updated illustrations (2007) by Brandon Dorman.

It sounds trite to say that the illustrations took my breath away, but they did indeed.

I read this to our little neighbor girls and they smiled and giggled and wanted to read it again and again.

A nasty wizard who lives in a tower turns a frog into six various transformations. There is a great deal of poetry and a rhythmic flow to the text.

Highly recommended!

As a scheming wizard idly ponders what wickedness he will wreak today, he turns a bullfrog into a flea, a pair of mice, and more. The rhyming text captures the dark intonation of a wizard chanting a spell.

A bored, old wizard finds an unsuspecting bullfrog and turns him into many different things. The wizard has great joy casting spells on the frog. Just when you think that the wizard is going to leave the frog in its natural form, he turns him into a cloud of smoke. At the end of the story, he is looking out his window for his next victim.

I have never read a poem in story from. It was great! The poet uses very descriptive and rhyming words in his poem to tell the story. Each page left me guessing about what will happen next. The illustrations added depth to the poem. Each picture helped move the poem along with great color and action.

This would be a great book to help introduce poetry into the classroom. The teacher could read it then show more discuss how the poet uses descriptive words and rhyming words in his poem. Another extension is that the students may also write a poem in story form. The teacher could have the students write about the next spell that the wizard is going to conjure up. The teacher could encourage the students to use rhyming words like in the poem. show less

Wonderous spooky book. Illustrations, by Brandon Dorman, are fluid, eerie, and suffused with green light. There's not much plot - a wizard sends a frog through a number of changes - but children should enjoy the book for Halloween.

This is the rhyming story of a wizard who practices elemental sorcery. He thinks long and hard on what evil deeds he will perform. He begins with one bullfrog and makes approximately six changes to it before beginning to wonder once again what or who he will use for his next spell.

Although I am not fond of books full of magic, I enjoyed the rhyming words in this book. It also has extraordinary illustrations bringing the fantasy to life with vivid colors.

In the classroom, I would use this book to talk about the differences between fantasy and reality. We would play a game with flash cards containing pictures of people, places, and things that could be sorted into either fantasy or reality with each student deciding and telling which show more category their flash card would fit into. I would also create a brew where each child would be responsible for bringing a unique item to class to place inside a cauldron filled with dry ice. show less

This book is filled with beautiful illustrations that accompany the story. The plot is similar to children's fairy tales. Prelutsky takes the wizard idea, and makes it his own.