The Caterpillar and the Tadpole

Today I read THE most horrifying book to the children, unintentionally of course.

The story was called The Tadpole's Promise. It starts with a tadpole and a caterpillar falling madly in love from looking at each other through a pond. Very sweet, though I knew from the beginning it was going to be doomed as they would never be in each other's worlds #GoldenCompass. BUT little did I know how tragic it really would turn out.

You see, normally I would do a prereading of every book I read to the kids but this was the first day back after holiday and things were going a bit crazy. I just asked a lovely boy to pick out a story before launching into reading it with full voices and actions, made up as I go.

The gist of the story was that the two fall in love and promise each other they will never change - you see how this is beginning to get risky. 1. both a tadpole and caterpillar are both very limited forms and 2. youth must mature.

Also, the caterpillar has a beautiful rainbow stripe down her side which the tadpole falls in love with and calls "his rainbow" BUT the caterpillar keeps coming to the pond and discovering her lover has once again changed and she is heartbroken. When the tadpole begins to grow it's front legs, loses his tail, and has back legs, she announces this is the last straw and strops off in a hump. Eventually she comes to her senses but by now she has also changed. So she flies as a butterfly back to the pond to say she will always love the tadpole no matter how he changes, but this time she sees a frog. As she goes to fly in to ask the frog where the tadpole has gone...he leaps up and swallows the butterfly whole. The last line is "so the frog waited on his lilypad, always wondering where his rainbow went."

This is the point when the children began to scream. Not little shrieks, but full out Home Alone wails and it wasn't long before I realised I was screaming equally as loud with them. Not only do they not end up together, but he consumes her entirely and doesn't even know it!

Luckily there were no tears, only screams of disbelief and shock. Once the screams died down we did burst into a fit of giggles from being so caught off guard. I quickly moved on to a round of singing Che Che Koolay before dismissing them to free choice.

I can't wait for parent comments and questions tomorrow or my nightmares tonight.

Here is the worst: