New Arrivals: Picture Book: Frog on a Log? Kes Gray & Jim Field

Frog on a Log?
Kes Gray & Jim Field
ISBN: 9780545687911
Originally English, with some "rhymes" that don't play out as a result.

This is a cute little book, but it illustrates (ha ha) the difficulties with using specific regional accents and language in a book that is then published somewhere else in the world.  Frog is sick of sitting on his log, because it's frankly uncomfortable.  He wants to sit on the mat, but the Cat is quite firm - Cats sit on mats.  Frogs sit on logs.  Why?  It's just the proper way of things.  Cat goes on to explain what all sorts of animals sit on, from the primer-reader basics: hares on chairs, mules on stools - to frankly ridiculous assignments: moles on poles, weasels on easels, puffins on muffins (all creatively illustrated with confused animals).

There's really only one difficulty, and it comes in with the difference between British and American English.  Early on, we're informed that "gophers sit on sofas" which will blow any American kid's mind trying to make that rhyme.  In American English, gopher is pretty much equivalent to "GO for" - as in, go out and get a thing.  The "r" is quite distinct.  That's I think how it's pronounced in England too.  So far so good.  Sofa creates the difficulty here - In American English, it doesn't have an "r" at all - the "a" at the end is a nice wide open "ahhhh" sound like you make when the doctor sticks that thing down your throat.  Whooopsie!  We're good for quite a while until we get to the exact reverse situation a bit further in: Cat declaims that "Gorillas sit on pillars."  Here, we're both agreed that "pillar" has a nice ending "r" sound, but in American, gorilla most absolutely does not.  Again, it's that wide open "ahhh" that ends on the vowel, with no consonant at all to close it out.    

Are these two instances enough to totally sink the book?  Of course not.  But they are enough to give a read-aloud parent pause, and to make thoughtful children confused, and to make me decide against it for storytime.  Those animals could easily have been substituted for others that share the same rhymes in all (or at least the most-spoken) variants of English with no harm done, but the book was simply made available in other markets as-is, possibly without thinking about the differences at all, and that's a real shame.