The setting is a small town. Our hero is a young boy with a bike, a dog, and time on his hands. He has a slightly retro name like Henry and a rueful attitude to life. His parents are kindly but vague, his neighbours quirky, and his community close knit. This is a world where adults are home in the daytime, kids don’t have to come in until the streetlights go on, grandmas make pies, and nobody locks cars. Girls are tough and scary.

Our hero has a clearly defined goal, usually involving making money, and his difficulties often include bad haircuts, explosions, machines going awry, and at least one instance of somebody nearly setting the house on fire. We read of these adventures in short chapters, on nice open pages with comfortable large type and the occasional illustration. This is the world of Henry Huggins, Robert McCloskey’s Homer Price, and Keith Robertson’s Henry Reed. If you are a young reader encountering your first chapter book, this territory is a very comfortable place to be.

In Frogger, the versatile and prolific Frank Edwards, co-founder (with John Bianchi) of Bungalo Books, and my nominee for the most “can-do” figure in Canadian children’s publishing, launches a new series of novels of small town life. It is summer’s end in Tichburg. Frogger is running out of time to earn the money to buy special basketball shoes. Scheme one involves babysitting the terrible Troth twins. Elements in the ensuing mayhem include a home invasion by a loquacious old geezer, a haircut interrupted by a summons from the volunteer fire department, a wheelbarrow accident, destruction of drywall, and a twin with his head stuck between the porch railings. The ignominious end of Frogger’s babysitting career kicks off the second half of the book, set at the fall fair, in which Frogger gets involved with Bug Hapensak, her father, and their unusual business venture of selling single shoes. A pie-eating contest and a heroic rescue by Frogger keep things rolling. A single loose end to the story is dangled in front of our eyes as we are encouraged to anticipate the sequel. Clever marketing.

There is good stuff in Frogger. Edwards wisely doesn’t try to distort Tichburg to contemporary realities. Apart from the odd reference to pagers and complicated athletic shoes we could be in the 1940s, and the book is all the better for it. Edwards knows how to create a comic vignette, a goofy minor character, an absurd invention, and a tall-tale scene. He also knows important things like the fact that a naked glass of milk is unacceptable, needing a sandwich or cookies. His timing can be perfect. Talking of a hot car, he says, “Everything melted inside when you climbed back in: chocolate bars, crayons, and kids.”

Taken as a whole, though, this book made my fingers itch for a blue pencil. For such a madcap plot, the pace is oddly plodding. We are given many details that do not advance the story, add to the characters, flavour the world of Tichburg, or provide delight in themselves. Details of clearing up from breakfast, the exact name of a vine growing over the porch — these sections just delay us on our way to the good bits. Edwards’ style is also dotted with formal phrases that pull us away from Frogger’s point of view: “The clink of cutlery on china indicating that breakfast was under way”; “Nicky seemed to assume that their next-door-neighbour status required some restraint”; and “Once a suitable location became available.”

One of the characters, the old geezer, also speaks with touches of dialect spelling (“Ya got the operator, told her what ya wanted, ’n in an hour everyone knew your business.”) I appreciate the impulse to flavour this speech but this is hard to read, especially for new readers.

Everyone who works with young readers knows how important these first chapter books are. They launch real readers. There aren’t enough of them. There certainly aren’t enough Canadian examples. The Pokeweed folks are very clear as to their intention. Their web site speaks of their books as “standard tools in the North American literacy effort.” My concerns with Frogger arise because I fear it will miss its potential audience. That would be a shame because theSnug as a Big Red Bug readers need somewhere to go next.