After fifth-grader Josh Hewitt finds a five-legged frog in a boggy area near his backyard, he takes it to school, where it sickens and dies. Josh investigates and discovers that the frog’s extra leg may be caused by contamination in its pond, but before he can get the frog’s body to an interested scientist, it is confiscated by the school principal. Pederson’s full-page illustrations ramp up the comedy and action, and Donovan ably shows how the school world of kids is separate and little understood by the adults. Joshua, a talkative kid who has been pegged as something of a troublemaker, is also convincingly portrayed. A subplot involving Josh’s efforts to learn about the personality of his birth father seems tacked on, but this is a minor quibble with a novel that many young readers will enjoy as much for its picture of grade-school life as for its ecological message. Grades 4-6. --Todd Morning
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