Frazzle

Serendipity

by Stephen Cosgrove, Robin James (Illustrations)

At first, Frazzle isn't ready to take care of her new egg. Eventually she will learn that children need care-even before they are born.

Genres: Childrens, Picture Books, Fiction, Kids, Young Adult

32 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1990

Reviews

[Arwen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Children need care - even before they are born.

Want a very weird subject to write your children's book about? How about prenatal care? Frazzle is about a bird who is a first time mom, and hasn't a clue how to take care of her body or her egg. She has to learn that it's important to eat well, get enough sleep and to exercise. The story may be strange, but the illustrations are beautiful and emotive which is why the six year old likes the story.

[J · Rating 4 out of 5]

An adult Serendipity tale although in my opinion for it teaches you to take care of yourself if you want to take care of your child even before they are born. A beautiful idea and a wonderful concept given, especially when you consider some of the ways that mothers carry their little ones before they are born.

The book is a bit surreal when it comes to the whole parenting factor since it only talks about the one parent but all in all it was cute.

[K · Rating 2 out of 5]

Published ten years after Catundra, showing that Cosgrove really hadn't learned a lot during that decade.

Frazzle is similar, in some ways, to one of my favorite books as a kid, Horton Hatches the Egg. In both, there's a bird who lays an egg and doesn't particularly want to care for it; except in this case, rather than being hatched and raised by a conscientious elephant, the mother bird eventually does figure out how to care for her baby.

So why do I love one story and not the other? Possibly the ages at which I first encountered them. (Should I re-read Horton and see if I cringe at any of it now?) But I think the stories are different in some key ways that place odd amounts of blame on a mother who's supposed to (like in all Serendipity stories) directly represent something in the real world. In this case: mothers who should be shamed for not being good enough mothers.

Frazzle is fat. That's one of the first things you learn about her, and the part that connects it with the deep fat-shaming present in Cosgrove's earlier and much more offensive work, Catundra. She eats so much sugary food that she can't even sit on her egg without fear of crushing it and the chick inside. Fortunately, when Frazzle decides to change and take better care of both herself and her egg, she starts eating more healthy food and exercising but "never [becomes] skinny." Meaning that weight isn't necessarily a direct reflection of healthiness. (A slight improvement over the fat-cat narrative of his earlier book.)

Still, the bad-mother shaming in this book is...weird. Cosgrove, a man, is writing a story where fathers aren't present or seen as responsible in any way. Instead, you just have these perfect flocks of female birds sitting on their eggs and doing everything exactly as they're supposed to, as Frazzle (alone in the world and inexperienced) fumbles her way through her first egg. It feels like a weird criticism of single mothers who don't dedicate every moment of their lives to caring for their unborn children - because yes, the moral of this story, as printed on the cover, is "Children need care - even before they are born."

The book is dedicated to the March of Dimes, which is a charity that I don't know a lot about, but I assume (hope?) it doesn't center its efforts around shaming pregnant women and single mothers for being exhausted and imperfect.

I often wonder what the illustration, Robin James, thought of some of the stories Cosgrove wrote. Did she collaborate with him on the text itself as she determined what to draw? How did she feel about his over-simplification of something as complex and stressful as becoming a mother?

Never really a fan of this book as a kid and even less of one as an adult.

[Colleen Bratley · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am torn with this book. It reads like a goal to show children that you can be whatever you want to be, but it always takes work and determination. The problem for me is I felt it was too harsh in some ways. The concept is commendable, but I would have used different words and ways to tell it in some places. Of course, each author has their own writing style, so others will probably find none of my issues.
It is a teaching story, and I am sure others will enjoy it as much or more than I.

[Miss Kelly · Rating 2 out of 5]

Okay book. The moral of the story is about eating healthy and exercising using birds to tell the story.
Fair book.

[Sioux · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book made me sad as a kid. The moral was somewhat positive...but the fact that the other birds referred to the protagonist as "fat and lazy" rang false for me. I think the point was that you have to love yourself to be truly healthy and to make a good parent, but it was weird...and even as a small child, I knew that birds do not generally spontaneously produce fertile eggs :P I think only frogs can do that.

[Annie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Holy mother shaming crap. I hadn't read this book since I was a child and found a box of these books in the basement today and thought I'd re-read. The illustrations are just as beautiful as I remember but…this is a bunch of fat-shaming, mother guilting crap. Very disappointing.
I'm a fitness freak and run about 10-15 miles a week for fun and love to do yoga, eat healthily, etc -- and I found this pretty offensive. If you aren't fit then you're a bad mother? This is rubbish.