Dog on a Frog? by Kes Gray and Claire Gray (review)

We've had a Frog on a Log and now a dog (a gravity-prone basset hound) is taking sitting to a new level by settling down on a frog. The displeased frog decides it's time to change up the sitting rules and gives every animal a rhyming object to sit on: dogs sit on logs, bears sit on stairs, etc. That "etc." reaches to some fanciful plans, with crickets sitting on tickets, leopards sitting on shepherds, cheetahs on fajitas, and so on for a splendid sequence of ridiculousness. The punchline, of course, is the frog's new seating arrangement: a very comfy lounge chair, complete with umbrella and cooling beverage. The Grays and Field ramp this all up into an excellent comic performance piece; the increasing pace of the ever-tighter rhyming examples is punctuated with hilarious back and forth between the frog and his dog and cat audience ("They don't have to like it," says the frog about one unlikely pairing. "They just have to do it") and culminates in a delectable tongue-twisting list. The animal figures are entertaining caricatures, with delicate details of texture contrasting with the broad humor of mugging faces and popping eyes, and there's effective stagecraft in the visual movement between the frog's conversation and the animals exemplifying the sitting plans. Listeners will giggle over the silliness, choose their favorite rhymes to join in with on repetition, and consider turning this into an ongoing game.