Young Friends Bookshelf review & Membership

Friends Journal May 2024

Many thanks to Gail Whiffen, associate editor of Friends Journal, for reading and reviewing Frog Song for the Young Friends Bookshelf in the May 2024 issue. Friends Journal publishes the Young Friends Bookshelf twice a year. This month’s selections also include two books focused on relationships across generations (Dear Mr. G by Christine Evans, illustrated by Gracey Zhang, and Bibi by Jo Weaver), a book on peaceful coexistence in times of scarcity (The First Day of Peace by Todd Shuster, illustrated by Tatiana Gardel), and a book on the five-thousand-mile river of dust that connects the Sahara and the Amazon (A River of Dust: The Life-Giving Link Between North Africa and the Amazon by Jilanne Hoffmann, illustrated by Eugenia Mello).

Friends Journal May 2024 issue is focused on membership and includes pieces on unconventional membership that speak to me as a birthright Friend without solid grounding at present in a monthly meeting. I also appreciate that senior editor Martin Kelley’s note, “A Membership That Is Ever Flowing,” includes mention of members who visit and settle on meeting grounds. That is, wildlife like squirrels and red-shouldered hawks, and the trees they need too. In tune, Friends Quarterly 2024 Issue 2 this month is also focused on membership and includes pieces on belonging and meaning.

Having been born to and raised for service among Friends, I consider myself a member of the Religious Society at large. Where, when, and how I will again land to settle in a monthly meeting is uncertain. For now, there are “some fruits solitude,” which for me include Frog Song.

Frog Song

Reviewed by Gail Whiffen for Friends Journal

As a kid who loved animals and facts, I enjoyed learning about our planet’s great diversity of wildlife. But how sad it was to learn about the extinct and endangered species! What can we do, I wondered, to stop or prevent such things from happening? There are many ways to get involved and connect with groups doing conservation work, but a child learning these facts can easily feel overwhelmed or hopeless. Megan Hollingsworth’s Frog Song offers one accessible entry point into the important work of researching these species and finding solutions to our current global ecological health crisis.

Did you know that globally amphibians are the most endangered vertebrates? The back cover of Frog Song leads with this truth, and makes a promise: “We can help them.” This coupled with the cute and smiley frog on the front cover, illustrated by Bonnie Gordon-Lucas, pulled me right in. The compact book opens with an “interspecies love poem” starring a young girl and a one-of-a-kind frog who form a special bond, learning from each other and singing songs, until one sad day the frog dies. But the girl keeps singing their songs, which eventually give birth to the “first treefrog of a certain kind.” There’s death and then there’s birth, and so on the cycle goes.

A publication of Friends Publishing Corporation, Friends Journal is offered continuously online and in print eleven times per year for readers throughout the United States and in 43 foreign countries. The Journal features Young Friends Bookshelf twice a year. Friends Publishing Corporation was founded in 1955 to promote religious concerns of the Religious Society of Friends and to provide information through written and spoken word. Friends Journal consolidates two previous Quaker publications and corporations, Friends Intelligencer (Hicksite) and The Friend (Orthodox).


© 2024 Megan Hollingsworth | All Rights Reserved

Megan Hollingsworth