Frogger
Quill & Quire, April 2000
by Sarah Ellis, a Vancouver librarian, storyteller and writer.

The setting is a small town. Our hero is a young boy with a bike, a dog, and time on his hands... This is a world where adults are home in the daytime, kids don't have to come in until the streetlights go on, grandmas make pies, and nobody locks cars. Girls are tough and scary.

. . . We read of (his) adventures in short chapters, on nice open pages with comfortable large type and the occasional illustration. This is the world of Henry Huggins, Robert McCloskey's Homer Price, and Keith Roberson's Henry Reed. . . . There is good stuff in Frogger Edwards wisely doesn't try to distort Tichburg to contemporary realities. Apart from the odd references to pagers and complcated athletic shoes, we could be in the 1940s, and the book is all the better for it. Edwards knows how to create a comic vignette, a goofy minor character, an absurd invention, and a tall-tale scene. He also knows important things like the fact that a naked glass of milk is unacceptable, needing a sandwich or cookies. His timing can be perfect. Talking of a hot car, he says, "Everything melted inside when you climbed back in: chocolate bars, crayons, and kids."