In 1951, the Hula Drainage Project began to con­vert wet­lands into avail­able space for hous­ing and agri­cul­ture. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, this process led to the destruc­tion of a cru­cial ecosys­tem. An unusu­al amphib­ian, the paint­ed frog, dis­ap­peared and was believed to have gone extinct. When a paint­ed frog turned up in Israel’s Hula Val­ley in 2011, sci­en­tists were sur­prised and thrilled. In Amber A. Novak and Maya Gonen’s high­ly rec­om­mend­ed and infor­ma­tion­al pic­ture book, the nar­ra­tor is a talk­a­tive paint­ed frog, encour­ag­ing the fel­low mem­bers of his species to learn their his­to­ry and appre­ci­ate their importance.

An engag­ing tone defines the book. Adopt­ing the con­ceit that the frogs are as indif­fer­ent as some humans, the nar­ra­tor appeals to both their self-inter­est and sense of respon­si­bil­i­ty to oth­ers. Like a stand-up com­ic try­ing to cap­ture the atten­tion of an audi­ence, the frog chal­lenges them: ​“You! Over there! Is your third eye­lid clos­ing? Stay awake! This is the sto­ry of who you are.” Maya Gonen’s crea­tures, with col­ors com­ple­ment­ing their sur­round­ings, have expres­sive fea­tures, as do the humans who inter­act with them. Deter­mined to accom­plish their goals, and lat­er sad­dened by the unin­tend­ed con­se­quences, these Israelis are final­ly depict­ed as activists work­ing together.

Describ­ing their orig­i­nal home as a ver­i­ta­ble Gar­den of Eden, the frog paints a pic­ture of eco­log­i­cal bal­ance, with ​“delight­ful­ly stinky marsh­es” and ​“deli­cious mos­qui­tos” which were per­fect for frogs, but less so for humans. Pic­tures of well-inten­tioned work­ers plagued by mos­qui­to bites shows that humans were not vil­lains. They were try­ing to improve their coun­try through devel­op­ment, but failed to antic­i­pate all the con­se­quences. The ​“giant met­al claws” of their equip­ment turned the lake into dry land. ​“Noisy engines” fright­ened away the ducks. From the point of view of Hula paint­ed frogs, their home is now a wasteland.

But frogs, like peo­ple, are resilient. The nar­ra­tor reports that, ​“against all odds,” some frogs have sur­vived, leav­ing the poten­tial for renew­al. There is a sub­tle change of tone from descrip­tion to a clear mes­sage, with the frog declar­ing that, work­ing togeth­er, peo­ple can bring pos­i­tive changes. The result is Israel’s first nature pre­serve, where a park ranger spots one hardy sur­vivor: mot­tled, bumpy, and beau­ti­ful. Sci­ence and poet­ry mix in the frog’s lyri­cal cel­e­bra­tion of a species that has come back to life, ready to jump, sing, and play in its mucky, sog­gy, bog. Human beings are not per­fect, he con­cedes, but they need to be encour­aged in their com­mit­ment to acknowl­edge mis­takes and set things right.

The book includes an after­word with addi­tion­al information.