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C H A P T E R 1 :
Introduction to the World of Children’s Literature

23
the Pacific. The map showed the Pacific area, so he must be writing about one of the 
places where he lives. 
On the back cover of the book, I see an excerpt from the story, a short summary, 
and some excerpts of reviews. Reading the back cover gives me a lot of information. 
The main character is named David Alspeth, and he is 14 years old. The Frog is the 
name of a sailboat—not a character. There is a storm at sea, and David is stranded 
with little food and water and no radio. (He should have taken a cell phone with 
him.) One of the reviewers said this is a survival story. Hatchet was a survival story 
also, so I think I’m really going to like this book. 
On the front cover is a picture of a small sailboat in a stormy sea. The size of 
those waves makes me remember when my family went on a cruise and I got so sick. 
I feel sorry for the boy inside the boat because the sky looks dark, and the storm 
might last a long time. In the picture I can’t see the boy, but the boat looks modern, 
so it looks like this is a realistic story that takes place in modern times. 
On the title page, I see the book was published in 1989. That explains why the 
boy didn’t take a cell phone. Everybody didn’t carry them around back then. The 
table of contents doesn’t tell me much, but after it is a diagram of the sailboat with 
all the parts labeled. I don’t know much about boats, so I’ll look back at this while 
I’m reading when I don’t know what a term means. The next page contains only a 
quote from someone named Joseph Conrad: “Only the young have such moments.” 
I don’t know what that means, but I’ll look at it again after I read the book to see if 
I understand it then. 
And now, I’m ready to read.
Box 1.4 lists the information I gained by using the prereading schema-building 
process before reading The Voyage of the Frog . In Box 1.5 , I have provided the 
steps for the process. (By the way, if you apply the strategy to this textbook, 
you will discover a glossary of all the key terms that appear in boldface type in
the textbook.)