Odo and the Towering Cattails

Every afternoon, Odo the frog practiced his songs on a flat stone beside the marsh. One day, he announced a sunset concert. “Come hear the biggest singer in the marsh!” he boasted. He asked Sela, a snail who made wonderful posters, to spread the news.

The opening illustration shows Odo up close. His puffed chest fills most of the picture, and his chin points high. Even the edges of his stone seat are outside the frame. He looks as confident as his words sound.

Sela wrote the heading “Sunset Songs” on a poster. “I'll draw the cattails beside your stone so everyone can find you,” she said. Cattails were tall marsh plants with slender leaves and brown tops. “Make me taller than those!” Odo said. “A grand singer needs a grand picture.”

The middle illustration steps back for a wide view. Odo sits near the bottom of the picture. Above him, towering cattails reach almost to the top. One brown cattail head is longer than Odo's whole body. His grand pose suddenly looks rather funny.

Odo studied Sela's sketch of the same scene. He stretched his legs and lifted his chin, but he still came nowhere near the cattail tops. His shoulders drooped. “I suppose I'm not very big,” he whispered. “Does that mean my concert won't matter?”

Sela set down her pencil. “The poster can show where you are without making you huge. And your song can be worth hearing without being the biggest.” Odo thought for a moment. Then he asked her to add a caption beneath the drawing: “Little singers welcome. Bring your voices!”

The final illustration shows sunset coloring the marsh gold. Odo shares his stone with three small frogs. Their smiling faces turn toward one another, and ripples curve gently around the stone. The cattails still rise far above them, but nobody is trying to look tall.

Odo began with one soft note. The others joined until a cheerful chorus floated across the water. For once, Odo wasn't wondering who sounded biggest. He was listening for a place where his voice could fit.