Hamish's Adolecent Novel 1/5

Toad Rage

Morris Gleitzman’s Toad Rage was published in 1999, and is about a cane toad named Limpy who got his name from an accident where he had his foot run over by a car, causing him to limp. Limpy decides that he is sick of his relatives constantly being run over on the highway by humans, and embarks on a journey to make humans like the cane toads to save his species. He is joined along the way by his cousin Goliath and gets help from a human girl. Limpy’s objective is to try to become an Australian mascot for the Olympics which he thinks will allow humans to accept and preserve his kind. 

Toad Rage utilises a third person narration towards the beginning of the novel with no indications of the characters being placed in a first person narrative structure. As the novel progresses, the story still maintains its third person narrative, but mainly focuses on Limpy’s point of view. The narrative structure of Toad rage uses the conventional method of narration, employing a exposition, complication and resolution. The exposition was established early in the first two chapters of the book. The complication of this story becomes evident to the reader when Limpy becomes sick of his relatives constantly being killed by humans. This leads to the climax of the story where he receives help from a human girl and tries to become a mascot for the Olympic Games. In the end the resolution is quite dissatisfying as the objective of Limpy’s quest was not achieved. 

One component of this story that Gleitzman employs which can be classed as a form of deep literacy is the concept of death. While most children’s authors tend to avoid incorporating aspects of death into their literature, Gleitzman in this book openly uses this as the focal point to the complication of the story because the character Limpy embarks on his journey due to humans killing his species.  This aspect of Toad Rage opens the young readers mind to deeper and wider thoughts which expands their knowledge and thinking about the concept. Gleitzman’s grammatical abilities with the use of adverbs make the reader feel the emotions that the author is conveying across in his story. 

Toad Rage would be useful in a literacy unit of work with an upper primary/middle year level because the concepts involved in this book allow for further critique and reflection, which could be understood by an older year level especially regard Gleitzman’s writing style. That said, when introducing the deeper thinking concept of death, this may be more suitable to cover with a 3, 4, 5 year level for further discussion and critique.