Commander Toad and the Big Black Hole (Paperstar Book)

Poor Commander Toad has not aged well. What was fresh, funny, timely satire in 1983 is stilted and old fashioned today. It pains me to give Yolen anything less than 4 stars, but I think this one is going to be relegated to my list of childhood things I won't revisit too closely with the little one.

Back in the 1980s, Jane Yolen wrote a series of early reader science fiction / humor books involving Commander Toad and the crew of the Star Warts. At our last trip to the library we checked out three of these books for Sean to read on our trip down to Santa Barbara.

The first of these that we read is Commander Toad and the Big Black Hole and I think it's our favorite because it has some good gross-out humor and a parody of Home on the Range which requires really poor singing. The inclusion of long tongues, off key singing and food being splattered makes for two laughing kids when we read the book out loud.

This is definitely a humorous easy reader, so it is a great choice for reluctant readers. This animal fantasy story is about frogs and toads in space finding a black hole that turns out to be a mouth. They become stuck on the sticky, pink tongue. Hilarious, right? Well, sometimes we have to encourage children to want to read. The humor is for some children and not others. The ship is named the Star Warts.

Media: pencil and colored pencil

Age Appropriateness: intermediate