Review by Frank Plowright

Anura is a kid who loves a book, which makes a library their favourite place. They’d rather spend the holiday volunteering at the library near their grandmother than head to camp.

Active, energetic and incredibly gushing are Anura’s primary characteristics, a template taken for the presentation including enthusiastically large dumps of information. Anyone irritated by that type of personality is going to be put off from the start, and it hampers what becomes Julie Fiveash’s primary theme of emphasising the wide range of skills and talents in any community, some of which are in danger of being lost if older folk don’t pass them on.

The focus is on a First Nation community, with Fiveash crediting Diné and Navajo people, but the highlighted skills such as maintaining a communal garden and weaving are common to other areas. In between explanations, Fiveash has Anura gradually coming to know members of the local community.

It’s all very worthy, but Welcome to Soggy Stump never engages because there’s absolutely no subtlety. Explanations are the intention as Anura learns, but scripted questions leading to further explanations and Anura considering how much there is to learn is formulaic, while sections on inclusion are well intended, but almost patronising. Young readers know when they’re being lectured, and no amount of panels of Anura fascinated is going to prevent that realisation.

Presumably using a frog society rather than a human one is down to the artistic simplicity communicating better, but it’s a very basic look.

Having concentrated on Anura building the library’s community archive and learning about the neighbourhood, Fiveash takes a sudden turn into coping with grief as Anura’s grandmother dies, and that monopolises the final third of Welcome to Soggy Stump. Given the earlier themes, it’s misguided and out of place, while also sowing confusion as to Anura’s wider family. What until then is presumed to be a young teen remains in their gran’s house on their own for the remainder of the book.

Welcome to Soggy Stump is well-intentioned, but fatally flawed.