COMMANDER TOAD AND THE INTERGALACTIC
SPY
Illustrated by Bruce Degan
ISBN# 0-698-30747-X Coward hardcover
ISBN# 0-698-20623-1 Coward paperback
ISBN# 0-698-11418-3 PaperStar paperback |
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I began the COMMANDER TOAD books because I saw an article in the
local newspaper about a boy and his frog who had just won a jumping-frog contest.
The frog's name was "Star Warts." I thought it would be funnier if the
frog had been a toad, since the old superstition is that toads gives you warts.
(It isn't true, of course.) So I invented frog and toads in space on a ship called
"Star Warts." Every book is riddled with puns. (I love puns!) There
are seven Commander Toad books altogether, though I have been thinking about possibly
writing an eighth. A half-hour television show was made with puppets about Commander
Toad but it wasn't very successful. For some reason, several of the characters
were changed--Jake into a human boy and Doc Pepper into a turtle--and the ship's
name was changed as well to "Stella." Also all the puns were missing.
This book was a Junior Literary Guild Book and on the 1982-83
Iowa Children's Choice Award Master List. All the Commander Toad books were
on Reading Rainbow.
PaperStar
edition is in print.