Our principal is a frog by Stephanie Calmenson, illustrated by Aaron Blecha

In the past few years, beginning chapter books have become more and more popular. Scholastic led the charge with their Branches series and more and more publishers are creating their own illustrated beginning chapters. Read and Bloom from Bloomsbury was a disappointment to me; I've only found one series (Wallace and Grace) that I liked.

So, I was interested to see that Aladdin has jumped on the bandwagon with an interesting twist; their new Quix (Fast-Fun-Reads) beginning chapter books are illustrated with black and white cartoons. They have bold text in a large font and.... they are adapted picture books!

The first title I looked at was adapted from the 2001 picture book, The Frog Principal, which was illustrated by Denise Brunkus. There are some slight changes in wording and updates - the computers are more updated, there are cell phones instead of landlines, etc. The basic plot and most of the text remains the same though.

Mr. Bundy, the principal at PS 88, is always trying to improve life for his students and teachers. He decides a magician will make a great assembly speaker, as long as they are suitably educational of course. Unfortunately, he gets Marty Q. Marvel, a very confused magician, who accidentally turns him into a frog! Mr. Bundy manages to get back into school and keep on working as principal, but being a frog causes more and more problems, until he finally solves his problem through a lucky circumstance.

Verdict: This is amusing and the black and white cartoons are funny. It doesn't stand out from the crowd though, especially in comparison to the more up to date and popular Branches titles from Scholastic. An additional purchase.

ISBN: 9781481466677; This edition published May 2018 by Aladdin; Borrowed from another library in my consortium