1

Brandon Zvanut

Writing 2

03/02/20

Frog Dispersal to Where Frogs Hop to

Ecology is considered the most difficult branch of biology to accurately study, due to the

substantial spatial and temporal requirements associated with ecological research. Therefore, it’s

understandable why ecological research articles may be difficult to interpret and understand for

readers that don’t belong to the articles’ intended audiences of biologists, or more specifically,

ecologists. For this reason, I chose to translate Eugene E. Schroeder’s article, “Dispersal and

movement of newly transformed green frogs, rana clamitans”, into the genre of a children’s

book, using the works of Eric Carle as a reference, ultimately broadening my audience from

ecologists to children. This is important because allowing a child to learn, and most importantly,

understand the results of a scientific research paper which took years to perfect which took years

for even the most intelligent people to perfect is extremely valuable to not only that child’s

development, but also to the development of a whole generation’s intellect. My translation is a

solid representative of the genre of children’s books due to the fact that it adheres to the general

conventions of Carle’s works, which include the incorporation of a subject that aims to teach the

audience, textual simplicity, and the use of pictures that correspond to the captions of each page.

Using these conventions in my translation promotes child-friendly learning, all while

maintaining the findings from Schroeder’s green frog experiment as its central focus, thus

effectively educating my audience of children about a relatively complex ecological research

article.
 2

My translation broadens the narrow audience of Schroeder’s article to an audience of

children, essentially transferring the results of an experienced ecologist’s research to the

developing minds of children. The importance of children’s books that accomplish this feat

cannot be understated as they kickstart a whole generation’s knowledge and experience within a

particular subject-matter. Who knows? Maybe a three-year-old who read a children’s book about

apes may become the world’s next Jane Goodall forty years in the future. Similarly, Eric Carle’s

The Very Hungry Caterpillar, while straying away from realism slightly, succeeds in

familiarizing children with the growth and metamorphosis cycle of a caterpillar, a phenomenon

that was intensively studied before being proven as fact and is now being taught to children who

are just learning to read. According to John Swales, author of The Concept of Discourse

Community, one of the criteria that qualifies a certain group as a discourse community is having

“members with a suitable degree of relevant content and discoursal expertise” (Swales, 1990, p.

87). This further exemplifies the importance of my transformation’s audience transition from

ecologists to children, as ecologists are a discourse community which consists of individuals

with a very high level of experience within the field of ecology, while children, given their

young age have very little experience in almost everything. As shown by the previous example

of The Very Hungry Caterpillar, teaching children something (usually about nature or animals),

is a foundational convention of the large majority of Carle’s works.

The genre of children’s books generally follows the convention of teaching children

something about a particular topic, and more specifically, Carle’s children’s books tend to teach

his audience about the subject of nature or animals. In A Very Hungry Caterpillar, Carle, as

previously stated, not only teaches his audience about the life cycle of a caterpillar, but also

familiarizes children with both counting as well as the different forms of food that exist. For my
 3

translation, I chose to follow this convention by familiarizing my audience with the different

habitats that exist on Earth as well as with the results from Schroeder’s research on green frogs.

Schroeder’s article teaches its audience of biologists/ecologists about the dispersal of a species of

green frogs. The article accomplishes this by including data, figures, and a discussion of the

empirical results. Due to the fact that my translation’s audience of children would likely make no

sense of the data or figures in the article, I decided to only include the results of the experiment,

rather than the path that Schroeder takesook to obtain these results. Some of the central results of

Schroeder’s research can be summed up in a few main points: The cause for the frogs’ dispersal

was high population density and a lack of a suitable habitat, Frogs dispersed suddenly and

completely after transformation, and their dispersion was radial (Schroeder, 1976, p.473). For

my translation, to ensure that I was accurately teaching my intended audience, I picked apart

these main points from the results of Schroeder’s article and included them in my children’s

book, along with mentioning the various habitats that the frogs may have dispersed to, however,

due to the differing audiences that ecological research articles and children’s books are written

for, I had to undergo the process of simplifying Schroeder’sthese points.

Another convention of Carle’s works that I chose to follow in writing my translation is

simplicity. In his book, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Carle consistently includes concise and

simplistic sentences such as, “The very hungry caterpillar then ate through one green leaf. He

started to feel better.” (p.20), promoting a read that is not too difficult for children of the correct

reading level to understand, which also assists in promoting the previously mentioned

convention of teaching the audience. In writing my translation, I kept in mind the fact that

children would likely not understand terms like “radial dispersion” or “population density”, as

these terms were written in the article with the discourse community of ecologists in mind,
 4

therefore following this particular convention of Carle’s was a necessity. In my translation, for

example, the inclusion of the captions “But there were too many frogs in the pond! There was

not enough room for them all!” (Zvanut, 2020, p.4) and “So that very night, each and every frog

left the lake” (p.5), on two different pages corresponds to Schroeder’s findings that high

population density (too many organisms in one space) and lack of suitable shelter was the main

cause of dispersal, in addition to the finding as well as that frogs dispersed suddenly and

completely after their transformation. Here, I maintain Carle’s convention of simplicity by

including words that don’t require an expansive vocabulary and by keeping the captions on each

page short and to the point. I also adhere to the aforementioned convention of teaching that Carle

includes in his works by ensuring that the main ideas of Schroeder’s findings are communicated

effectively despite the simplification. ComparablySimilar to using simplicity in his captions to

make his ideas easier to understand, Carle also follows the convention of including pictures that

correspond to these particular captions.

The inclusion of a visual aspect to children’s books allows for an easier understanding of

the textual material written on each page, which is why a large majority of children’s books

adhere to this convention. Lisa Bickmore, author of “Genre in the Wild: Understanding Genre

Within Rhetorical (Eco)systems”, states that “…genres evolve and change over time, each user

taking up a genre takes it up just a little bit differently” (p.16). Carle, exemplifying Bickmore’s

statement regarding the evolution of genres over time, takes this convention of visualization to

the next level. Rather than solely including a picture on each of his pages, he ensures that the

picture(s) corresponds with the caption on each page and colors or changes the font size of the

most important word or subject of the page. For example, in The Very Hungry Butterfly, Carle

states, “Now, the caterpillar was no longer small. He was a big, fat, caterpillar” (p.21), with the
 5

word caterpillar , the subject of the book, colored in rainbow, showing that it is the subject of the

book. and Additionally, the words small and big are written in smaller and larger font,

respectively, thus further promoting an easier understanding of the message each page contains

through a visual aspect. Some might argue that the inclusion of pictures within children’s books

is actually detrimental to a child’s overall understanding as they may be tempted to only look at

the pictures, however Carle’s convention of changing both font size and font color reinforces that

children read both the captions in addition to looking at the pictures. For my translation, I chose

to follow Carle’s conventions of visualizing the subject of each page by including a picture as

well as colored font to my children’s book. On one page of my translation, I drew a picture of a

lake with arrows pointing away in all directions from the lake to further reinforce Schroeder’s

finding that the frog’s undergo radial dispersion (movement in all directions) when leaving their

home lake, reducing potential misunderstandings my audience could have. . Additionally, since

the discipline of ecology generally focuses on the environments that organisms inhabit, I added

colored font to the words that describe the habitats that the frogs traveled to, as well as the word

frog itself to ensuringe my audience understands the significance of the environments the frogs

inhabitthe frogs’ location . I also added color to the word frog, similarly to how Carle colored the

word caterpillar, ensuringand that my audience knows that the frogs are the main subject of my

translation. I thought including these conventions would be beneficial because, as previously

stated, the subject of ecology is one of the most difficult to research and thoroughly understand,

so adding a visual aspect would certainly reinforce my audience’s understanding of Schroeder’s

empirical findings.

The translation of Schroeder’s article to the genre of a children’s book effectively

expands the intended audience from ecologists/biologists to children. While writing my

 6

translation, I followed some of the conventions commonly seen in the majority of Carle’s works,

specifically, the implementation of a subject that aims to educate its audience, use of simple and

straightforward writing, and the inclusion of several visual aspects on each page. In doing so,

despite ecological research articles being rather difficult to fully understand, especially when you

are not part of the paper’s intended audience, my translation succeeds at accomplishing the

important feat of educating its audience about the results of Schroeder’s article.
 7

References

Bickmore, Lisa. Genre in the wild: understanding genre within rhetorical (eco)systems. In J.

Crisler (Ed.), Writing 2 Reader (Winter 2020, pp. 16).

Carle, Eric. (1969). The very hungry caterpillar. United States: World Publishing Company.

Schroeder, Eugene E. (1976). Dispersal and movement of newly transformed green frogs, rana

clamitans. The American Midland Naturalist, 95(2), 471-474. doi: 10.2307/2424413

 8

Swales, John. The concept of discourse community. In J. Crisler (Ed.), Writing 2 Reader (Winter

2020, pp. 84-91)

Zvanut, Brandon. (2020). Green frogs’ journey.