The Ballad of Tubs Marshfield

October 12, 2020
Life is “a song” for Tubs, a musician frog who lives in a Louisiana swamp where he and his community of animals have always had all they’ve needed. But then things change. Fish, a crucial food source, begin to disappear, and many animals start coming down with the same ailment. Pythia, an alligator witch, tells Tubs that by traveling to the city and sharing his songs, he can save the swamp. So Tubs leaves his beloved home while Lila, his doctor cousin, stays to investigate whether the water is to blame for the illness. When Tubs has a change of heart and heads back home, he discovers a pipe pumping pollution into his swamp as well as the factory responsible for it. The animals must collaborate and use their strengths, including Tubs’s songwriting skills, to save their home. Hoffman (Bernard Pepperlin) brings the rich beauty of the ancient swamp to life with vivid descriptions of its scents, sights, and sounds, making it clear why the animals must save it. While Hoffman shines a sharp light on humans’ damaging impact on nature, the story also shows the inspiring power of setting aside differences and working together to make change. Ages 8–12.

November 1, 2020

Gr 3-5-Tubs the frog lives for music. His ancestors have been singing their songs for 265 million years. In the Louisiana swamp, crawfish, salamanders, dragonflies, and swallows live harmoniously among the ferns and cattails. But something has changed. The inhabitants of the swamp are getting sick: Gloria is losing her feathers and Tubs has developed a rash. Lila, Tubs's cousin, is a scientist and physician who scrambles to figure out what's making the swamp creatures ill. Leaving home for New Orleans to realize his dream as a musician, Tubs inadvertently discovers what's wrong with his home. Can Tubs and Lila rally the creatures and stop the factory from spewing poisonous chemicals into the wetland? Hoffman has created in Tubs the voice of personal and collective responsibility for the protection of animal habitats that is sure to appeal to young activists; Tubs's protest songs become a call to action. Pointing vividly to the interconnectedness of humans and the denizens of the swamp, Lila suggests that if the creatures get sick, it won't be long before the factory workers will too. Some of the animals turn away from science, believing in magic and unsubstantiated rumor. Hoffman effectively builds suspense, as the story moves to its climax and the cause of the water contamination. VERDICT Hoffman paints a powerful sense of place, and the language sparkles with the color, sounds, and smells of the teeming life of the swamp. A timely purchase for all collections about collective environmental responsibility.-Sarah Webb, City and Country Sch. Lib., NY

Copyright 2020 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

October 15, 2020
Can a frog and his community survive devastating changes to their swamp? Tubs Marshfield is on a quest to find out. A musically talented frog who loves his Louisiana home, Tubs reconnects with his beloved cousin Lila after she returns home from medical studies at the Sorbonne in Paris to establish a practice. When Lila begins to notice and track increasingly ill creatures of the swamp, a search ensues for the cause. Along the way, Tubs encounters an alligator witch named Pythia who urges him to leave the swamp and use his songs to reach those who live beyond it. Eventually the source of disease is identified as polluted water from a factory, and Lila attempts to convince the human factory representative that all of the disease it is causing will eventually affect him as well. The swamp wildlife collaborate and rally to fight the changes to their ecosystem head-on, turning desire into action. Hoffman is a former environmental reporter and accomplished adult novelist, but this middle-grade fantasy has some rough edges. Early on, there's some awkward back and forth between creatures who leave the swamp to enrich themselves and return versus those who choose to stay consistently, and, disappointingly, Hoffman uses nonstandard grammar as a means to differentiate characters of presumably lower educational attainment from others. Songs are spritely and fun. What the story lacks in plot, it makes up for in heartfelt messaging. (author's note) (Fantasy. 7-10)

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