Max Velthuijs 
Frog and the Stranger 

When Rat comes to live at the edge of their wood, the animals decide they don’t like having a stranger in their midst. But Frog is friendly by nature, and decides to find out if Rat is really as unpleasant as he is made out to be. As Frog discovers, Rat is intelligent and good hearted, and proves in a series of unexpected emergencies that the other animals have been too quick to condemn him.

About the author

Max Velthuijs was born in The Hague in 1923, and died in 2005, aged 81. He is now considered to be one of Holland’s most important creators of children’s books, alongside Dick Bruna. He won several awards, including the prestigious Hans Christian Andersen Medal 2004. He worked as an illustrator of posters, adverts and films after the war and only started working on children’s books in the 1980s. He lived in The Hague with his son.