Frog Day: A Story of 24 Hours and 24 Amphibian Lives

An illustrated hourly guide that follows twenty-four frogs as they eat, find mates, care for their young, and survive our harsh and changing planet.

In this short book, celebrated biologist Marty Crump leads readers on a worldwide field trip in search of frogs. Each chapter of Frog Day covers a single frog during a single hour, highlighting how twenty-four different species spend their time. Our day begins at midnight in Indonesia, with the rustle of leaves above. It’s not a bird, but Wallace’s flying frog, using its webbed feet and emerald-green skin flaps to glide through the forest canopy. In the early hours of the morning, we hear a horned marsupial frog ＂bopping＂ and a wood frog ＂quacking＂ to attract mates. At six o’clock in the morning, beneath a streetlight in Honolulu, we meet a corpulent, invasive cane toad slurping insects--and sometimes snakes, lizards, turtles, birds, and mice. At noon, we watch parenting in action as an African bullfrog bulldozes a path through the mud to free his tadpoles from a drying pond. At dusk, in a Peruvian rain forest, we observe ＂the ultimate odd couple＂--a hairy tarantula and what looks like a tiny amphibian pet taking shelter in the spider’s burrow. Other frogs make a tasty meal for this tarantula, but the dotted humming frog is a friend, eating the ants that might otherwise make a meal of the tarantula’s eggs.

For each hour in our Frog Day, award-winning artist Tony Angell has depicted these scenes with his signature pen and ink illustrations. Working closely together to narrate and illustrate these unique moments in time, Crump and Angell have created an engaging read that is a perfect way to spend an hour or two--and a true gift for readers, amateur scientists, and all frog fans.

Marty Crump is an adjunct professor of biology at Utah State and Northern Arizona Universities. She has been a herpetologist for more than fifty years, working with tropical amphibians to study parental care, reproduction, territoriality, cannibalism, and tadpole ecology. She is the author or coauthor of fourteen books, including A Year with Nature and Eye of Newt and Toe of Frog, Adder’s Fork and Lizard’s Leg, both also published by the University of Chicago Press. Most recently, she is editor of Lost Frogs and Hot Snakes: Herpetologists’ Tales from the Field. Tony Angell is the author and illustrator of over a dozen books related to natural history, including The House of Owls and In the Company of Crows and Ravens. He is also the illustrator of Bird Day: A Story of 24 Hours and 24 Avian Lives, also published by the University of Chicago Press.