Tabitha and Fritz Trade Places

Tabitha and Fritz Trade Places

Pack your bags and join Tabitha and Fritz as they journey across the world to switch lives. Tabitha the cat is tired of her easy, coddled life. An adventure across the world might spice things up! Fritz the elephant dreams of celebrating his birthday with an exciting voyage to a faraway place. So after the two connect online via Lair-bnb, they pack their bags and head across the globe to trade places. Will Fritz love the city life? Will the rain forest be all that Tabitha has hoped for? Join this adventurous pair as they find out whether the grass really is greener…on the other side of the world! K-Gr 3-A prim feline and outgoing pachyderm swap homes in this fun anthropomorphic tale. Tabitha is bored of indoor life in the city and Fritz seeks a new adventure during which to celebrate his birthday. They make a connection on "Lair-BNB" and proceed to switch places, documenting their trips through online messages to each other. As the vacations turn from fun and exciting (Tabitha meets some leopard "relatives," Fritz enjoys the company of his "tiny human" companion) to frustrating (Fritz makes a mess of a museum visit and Tabitha is tossed in a waterfall), the two decide "there's no place like home" and return to more familiar comforts-and a promise to travel together in the future. This tale is told exclusively in illustrations and messages, complementing one another as well as contradicting. The book functions as a beginning reader, despite a straightforward picture book layout, because both characters write with extensive descriptions and adjectives, and frequently sign off on their correspondence with alliteration ("grand and gourmet," "primal and pouncing"). Nearly all of the bright digital illustrations split the page, with Fritz's activities on one side and Tabitha's on the other. The virtual messages appear either within the scene or on the following page. In this way, readers can compare what the character thinks they are experiencing (a personal litter box) and what actually occurs (a steaming pile and an angry meerkat). The color palette is bright and cheery; Fritz is blue with a warm glow to his cheeks, and Tabitha is orange with round green eyes. VERDICT A laugh-out-loud story that spells out why the grass is not always greener, with subtle language lessons built in for emerging readers.-Clara Hendricks, Cambridge P.L., MAα(c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. “A satisfying spin on the trading-places trope.” ― Kirkus Reviews “Tabitha and Fritz are pretty much two of a kind, but debut author Frawley livens their epistolary exchanges with wordplay and knowing phrases…She gets a big assist from Stansfield ( Poems Out Loud! ), whose bright pastel settings, vivid expressions, and large cast of high-spirited supporting characters pull readers through the story.” ― Publishers Weekly “A laugh-out-loud story that spells out why the grass is not always greener, with subtle language lessons built in for emerging readers.” ― School Library Journal Katie Frawley grew up on a diet of Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle and Madeline. She went on to earn a bachelor’s in English from the University of Florida and a master’s in literature from Florida Atlantic University. These days, Katie lives in South Florida with her husband, four children, and a handsome mutt named Nantucket. When she’s not reading or writing, Katie can be found building pillow forts, testing recipes with her teensy sous-chefs, or shooing iguanas from her garden. Learn more about the author at www.katiefrawley.wordpress.com. Laurie Stansfield grew up in Oxford, England, but packed her bags and moved west to study illustration at the University of the West of England. She now works as a freelance illustrator. She is the illustrator of Poems Out Loud! , published by Penguin UK, and has more books forthcoming. Her self-published work was highly commended by the Macmillan Prize for Illustration in the UK. Laurie lives with her husband in Bristol, United Kingdom. Learn more about the illustrator at www.lauriestansfield.co.uk.