When he tries to interview a magician to perform at the elementary school, Principal Bundy is inadvertently turned into a frog! But he loves being a principal so much, why can't he keep being one even as an amphibian?

This book lives up to the imprint's promise of "fast fun reads." The chapters are short and the font is so large that reading this is a breeze. It will undoubtedly help readers transitioning from early readers to larger chapter books feel accomplished that they read such a thick book. The vocabulary is also fairly simple on the whole, although there is a "word list" (read: glossary) at the end of the book for any child struggling or who might just want a refresher minus the context clues. These words are all bolded in the main text of the book.

In addition, there's some discussion questions to conclude the book. On the other end, the book begins with a character list, which names every character in the story (no matter how small a role they play) and describes something quick about them. Here I feel like it gets a bit dicey as the author notes that one Asian-American child is a "top student and class leader," which is a bit of a stereotype. Still, the cast list plus the illustrations are showing an attempt at diversity, which is appreciated.

The story itself is silly fun, which kids will like. There was a nice underlying theme about the importance of keeping one's promises. I personally wouldn't continue on with the next book, Our Principal Is a Wolf!, but I bet plenty of kids will. ( )

In the past few years, beginning chapter books have become more and more popular. Scholastic led the charge with their Branches series and more and more publishers are creating their own illustrated beginning chapters. Read and Bloom from Bloomsbury was a disappointment to me; I've only found one series (Wallace and Grace) that I liked.

So, I was interested to see that Aladdin has jumped on the bandwagon with an interesting twist; their new Quix (Fast-Fun-Reads) beginning chapter books are illustrated with black and white cartoons. They have bold text in a large font and.... they are adapted picture books!

The first title I looked at was adapted from the 2001 picture book, The Frog Principal, which was illustrated by Denise Brunkus. There are some slight changes in wording and updates - the computers are more updated, there are cell phones instead of landlines, etc. The basic plot and most of the text remains the same though.

Mr. Bundy, the principal at PS 88, is always trying to improve life for his students and teachers. He decides a magician will make a great assembly speaker, as long as they are suitably educational of course. Unfortunately, he gets Marty Q. Marvel, a very confused magician, who accidentally turns him into a frog! Mr. Bundy manages to get back into school and keep on working as principal, but being a frog causes more and more problems, until he finally solves his problem through a lucky circumstance.

Verdict: This is amusing and the black and white cartoons are funny. It doesn't stand out from the crowd though, especially in comparison to the more up to date and popular Branches titles from Scholastic. An additional purchase.

ISBN: 9781481466677; This edition published May 2018 by Aladdin; Borrowed from another library in my consortium