The Frog Who Wanted to See the Sea

Billout's (Something's Not Quite Right) monumental landscapes dwarf his main character, a little green frog. The golden-eyed Alice, bored with her pond, rolls up a lily pad under her arm and sets off to find the sea. On the way, she meets a fisherman who gives her a magic vial: ""'If you should find yourself in trouble,'"" he tells her, ""'this might be handy.'"" Indeed, the crashing waves of the wide sea are menacing, but Alice survives disaster by using the fisherman's gift. Billout seems more interested in the territory Alice sails through than he is in Alice herself. During her journey, he backs far away from the frog until she's the size of a fingernail (or smaller) and surveys the countryside for miles around her, emphasizing her diminutiveness against the expanse of nature. Although her journey takes her under Paris bridges and past German castles, Billout's landscapes, sparsely textured, have the feeling of uninhabited wilderness. Alice magically returns to the safety of her pond, but in a surprise conclusion, decides to strike out again, this time for good. ""She was never seen in the little pond again,"" the narrator says, but Billout reveals her secret; the last spread shows Alice center-stage, saucy and unafraid, surfing down the front of an enormous, moonlit wave. The scene has the kind of intensity and excitement the book-like Alice-seems to have been seeking all along. Ages 4-8.