[Repost] A Friendship That Never Fades Away: Reading “City Dog, Country Frog”

I’ve already pub­lished the book, but I haven’t read it yet. :) Thanks for shar­ing! Doudou will def­i­nite­ly be excit­ed to wel­come this new phase, because life is so sim­ple and mag­i­cal. ^_^Orig­i­nal address:Friend­ship that Nev­er Fails: Read­ing “City Dog, Coun­try Frog“author:I am Xiao Doudou   
sud­den­lySud­den­ly I come across a good book, and then I love it. I read it again and again, and the more I read, the more I love it. Then I will have the urge to write it down. I haven’t felt this feel­ing for a while, espe­cial­ly pic­ture books. I clear­ly remem­ber that the last book that gave me this urge to write wasMr. Leo Lion­ni’s “Tico’s Gold­en Wings”.
   
I read pic­ture books most­ly because I love them. This love has lit­tle to do with Doudou, because some books can be shared and enjoyed with her, while oth­er books leave me with a sense of sat­is­fac­tion that I can’t share with her for a while, while I feel the incom­pa­ra­ble sweet­ness and com­fort of eat­ing hon­ey as a child.
   
I love the refine­ment of pic­ture books and the real mas­ters of pic­ture book cre­ation. They have great wis­dom from see­ing thou­sands of things and will put a lot of effort into a thin book. With just a few hun­dred words and com­ple­men­tary paint­ings, they can blend all kinds of fla­vors of life into it.
 
   
haveSome peo­ple say that pic­ture books are only a tem­po­rary read­ing option, and when you grow up, you must tran­si­tion to pure text books because what pic­ture books can express is too lim­it­ed.

    And I want to say that good pic­ture books are my irre­sistible addic­tion on the road of read­ing.
   
As your read­ing expands, you begin to appre­ci­ate the intel­lec­tu­al space it cre­ates for you. In this space, not every­thing needs to be clear­ly stat­ed, not every expla­na­tion needs to be crys­tal clear. You want to leave some room for reflec­tion, for your thoughts to soar, for your imag­i­na­tion to wan­der.
   
A good pic­ture book author must pos­sess a high lev­el of gen­er­al­iza­tion and expres­sion skills, while a good illus­tra­tor must pos­sess superb com­pre­hen­sion and expres­sion. Both are indis­pens­able to cre­ate a won­der­ful dra­ma with a com­pact struc­ture, clear plot, and few words, yet it has ups and downs. The cli­max is so mov­ing that you want to stop talk­ing, and the sound of the book lingers in your mind even after you close it.
 
   
nowThe rea­son I am talk­ing about all this is because of a good book: “City Dog, Coun­try Frog”.

   
This is a new book that just hit the shelves. I got a sneak peek at it because of Clover’s pre­view event. Two days lat­er, after the book had already been cir­cu­lat­ed, I missed it so much that I placed an order online.

author:Mo Williams  
Illus­tra­tor:Joan Mut­ter
Those who are famil­iar with pic­ture books should be famil­iar with these two names.
These two cre­ative mas­ters have firm­ly occu­pied a place in the chil­dren’s pic­ture book cre­ation with their unique style
The col­lab­o­ra­tion of two peo­ple with very dif­fer­ent styles is bound to be excit­ing.
How­ev­er, as an excel­lent import­ed pic­ture book, the author, illus­tra­tor and trans­la­tor are all indis­pens­able.
So, when I read again——Translation: Ajia
I smiled from the bot­tom of my heart :)
What is qual­i­ty assur­ance? This is it!
 

【About the sto­ry】

One spring, a city dog vis­it­ed the coun­try­side for the first time, expe­ri­enc­ing the vast­ness of nature and its unfet­tered free­dom. He spot­ted a crea­ture he had nev­er seen before, sit­ting on a rock, “wait­ing for a friend.” “Here he comes!” said the coun­try frog sit­ting on the rock. So, they start­ed play­ing the coun­try frog game.

In the sum­mer, they met again, and the city dog want­ed to make the coun­try frog hap­py, so he taught him to play the city dog’s games.

In autumn, the city dogs came to the coun­try again, but the coun­try frogs were tired, so they sat on the rocks and played a game of rem­i­nisc­ing.

In win­ter, the city dog nev­er stopped run­ning and ran straight to the rock where the coun­try frog was. But the coun­try frog was not there, and the city dog wait­ed for a long time in the snow…

Anoth­er spring has arrived, and a new friend­ship has begun, but this time it’s a lit­tle dif­fer­ent.
 

 Open the book and the refresh­ing scent of light water­col­or will make you feel relaxed and hap­py.
The vivid four sea­sons unfold slow­ly in the book
In this spring,
You can read the youth­ful ener­gy and enthu­si­asm of the coun­try frogs,
You can also read the lit­tle restraint of the city dog
 
From spring to sum­mer,
You can sense from the pic­ture that their friend­ship is as sol­id as a rock.
But the text in the book is extreme­ly con­cise:It was sum­mer.
And I can almost smell the fla­vor of every word.
 

It’s anoth­er sea­son:
The city dogs nev­er stop.
No time to smell the fall­en leaves
He ran straight to
Coun­try frog rock.
 

“What shall we play today?” asked the City Dog.
“Dog game or frog game?”
The Coun­try Frog took a deep breath.
“I am a tired frog,” answered the Coun­try Frog.
“Maybe we can play a game of rem­i­nisc­ing.”
The coun­try frog is approach­ing the end of his life, but the city dog is com­plete­ly unaware of it.
If you see this pic­ture, you will see that the look in their eyes is so dif­fer­ent.
One is tur­bid and dim, the oth­er is still clear
At this time, the ruth­less­ness of the Cre­ator will make you secret­ly shocked
 

It is con­ceiv­able that in this win­ter,
The lone­li­ness and help­less­ness of city dogs
 

The book gives this seem­ing­ly sad sto­ry the most vital and heart­warm­ing end­ing.
Even if the sea­sons change and time pass­es, as long as we cher­ish love in our hearts, friend­ship will nev­er go away.
This frog-like smile made by the city dog
It will sure­ly impress every­one who reads this book qui­et­ly.
Then I will pay trib­ute to Mr. Joan Mut­ter in my heart.

   BookThe end­ing of the nov­el makes peo­ple think deeply after clos­ing the book, as it is a med­i­ta­tion on the pas­sage of time and touch­ing friend­ship.
  
In this world, some things can­not be changed, such as the pas­sage of time, the cycle of life, and the short lifes­pan of a coun­try frog, while a city dog may live for more than ten years.
  
But some things can flow for­ev­er, such as fam­i­ly, friend­ship and love, such as the beau­ti­ful melody of a song or the ever-chang­ing beam of light.
  
The friend­ship described in the book tran­scends time and species, extend­ing from the sto­ry of a city dog and a coun­try frog to a touch­ing eter­ni­ty. You can imag­ine that the friend­ship that has nev­er fad­ed away will make the city dog feel a vague sad­ness and hap­pi­ness when he occa­sion­al­ly thinks of the coun­try frog.
  
As long as there is a heart and love in the heart, it will be eter­nal.
  
  
teaseShe is about to enter an impor­tant peri­od in her life: say­ing good­bye to kinder­garten.
  
In the short time that fol­lows, I will have only a hand­ful of oppor­tu­ni­ties to tell sto­ries to the chil­dren in my class. I have been won­der­ing what kind of sto­ry I will choose to tell the chil­dren before the end of the semes­ter. This book may have the best answer.
 
   
Image Source:Giv­ing Tree Pic­ture Book Library Blog