Tadpole's Promise

Jeanne Willis, Tony Ross(Illustrator)

"Where the willow meets the water, a tadpole met a caterpillar. They gazed into each other's tiny eyes and fell in love. 'Promise me that you will never change', the caterpillar says."
And foolishly, the tadpole promises. But as the seasons pass and he matures, his legs grow, and then his arms - and what happens to his beautiful rainbow friend? As he sits on his lily pad, digesting the butterfly he has just eaten, he little realises that now he will never know!

Reviews

"Unforgettable."
Guardian

"I love this book so much"
Giovanna Fletcher

"Breaks the mould in form as well as content."
The Sunday Times

"Beginning with pages that open vertically instead of horizontally, this tongue-in-cheek tale takes a typical love story and sets it squarely and amusingly on end. Ross's vibrantly hued pen-and-ink and watercolour cartoons depict the edge of the pond where a caterpillar and a tadpole meet and fall in love. . . Willis strikes the perfect balance between the deadpan telling and the humorously overblown dialogue shared by the star-crossed pair, while the artwork masterfully enhances each and every nuance."
The School Library Journal

"For nourishment of grammatical and contextual awareness, a perfect book for reading aloud is Tony Ross' and Jeanne Willis' wicked little love story - Tadpole's Promise. It starts eloquently and promisingly: "Where the willow meets the water a tadpole met a caterpillar. They gazed into each other's tiny eyes... and fell in love. She was his beautiful rainbow and he was her shiny black pearl." But then the tadpole promises the caterpillar he will never change thus ensuring the most captive of reading audiences as they watch the inevitable changes that unfold. The final gasp-making twist (student teachers have shrieked!) is all the funnier for being juxtaposed against such poetic language."
Alison Kelly - Books for Keeps