Boomerang Books Info Bank

Morris Gleitzman was a perfect (and obvious) choice of reader for his book Toad Rage in audio format. In this unabridged adventure, listeners are treated to the fast-paced life of Limpy the cane toad and his endeavour to answer the question that plagues his mind and drives his mission—why do humans hate toads? Limpy, sick of being the local public enemy and watching his relatives through get run over by bloodthirsty truck drivers, decides to leave his family and travel Queensland to try to change all the toad-hating minds. He comes across a delightful mix of characters, taken on with dramatic voice by Gleitzman, as he makes his way to ‘The Games’ in his quest to be a mascot. Gleitzman’s setting and animal characters are very human in their existence. Take Limpy; he collects his flattened family members on the highway and then stacks them in his room. So when a cane toad retorts ‘stack me!’ in exasperation, it’s a quirky parallel to the four-letter human equivalent. Gleitzman’s animated performance and the separation of chapters by high-energy music (at just the right level of expectation) induces the listener to swap CDs as hungrily as a reader turns the pages.