Meet Echo: The Little Frog Who Invites Us to Look Deeper

If you have read The Moonkeeper’s Cat, you may remember a little green frog sitting beside a pool of reflected stars. His appearance is brief, but it comes at an important moment in Miro’s journey.

Today, I want to spend a little more time with him.

His name is Echo, and he is the frog we have come to know as The Frog Who Speaks in Echoes.

I picture Echo as a plump emerald-green frog with a faint shimmer to his skin and eyes that catch the starlight. He is playful, perceptive, and comfortable with a little mystery. A conversation with him might leave you smiling—or thinking about a question differently than you did before.

Readers first encounter Echo in the original The Moonkeeper’s Cat, during Miro’s nighttime search for the moon. By the time she reaches his pond, she has been looking outward, following her curiosity through the world around her.

Then a small frog invites her to look a little closer.

“Look deeper, cat,” he tells her. “The moon is in disguise.”

That invitation leads into one of the story’s most meaningful moments. Miro peers into the mirrored pool, sees her face shining back, and discovers that a little piece of the moon’s light has been with her all along.

Echo helps her notice something she could not yet see for herself.

That is an important kind of friendship.

We all need someone who can sit beside us patiently while we work something out. Someone who takes our questions seriously. Someone who offers just enough encouragement for us to try looking again. In that moment at the pond, Echo becomes that friend for Miro.

His own past remains one of the less explored corners of Moon Bay. The original story introduces him beside the water, already still and observant, without telling us where he came from or how he became such a thoughtful little creature. Readers receive a glimpse of him through what he does for someone else.

There is room to discover more about him as his place in this world grows.

In the wider world of Moon Bay, Echo is associated with the Listening Pond—a place of ripples, reflections, and questions worth sitting with. His way of communicating through echoes gives that setting its playful character. A familiar word can return with a slightly different meaning. A question can sound different after someone has truly listened to it.

That connection between listening and understanding is what makes him so meaningful to me.

When I began creating Moon Bay, I wanted children to find a place where their feelings belonged. Working with young children has shown me how much they can carry before they have all the words to explain it. Sometimes a child knows that something feels wrong long before they can tell you why.

I wanted these stories to give families gentle ways to begin those conversations.

Echo carries that hope into a small, quiet encounter. His patience gives Miro time to make a discovery of her own. His presence suggests that a question is welcome, even when the answer takes a while to arrive.

There is also something lovely about giving that role to a frog.

Children can enjoy his round little shape, the water, the reflected stars, and the unexpected things he says. As they return to the story, they may begin to notice what his encounter with Miro means. A character can be funny and comforting while also giving us something to think about.

I hope Echo’s pond scene leaves readers with a little more confidence in their own capacity for kindness, courage, and hope. Those qualities can be difficult to recognize in ourselves. Sometimes a friend helps us see them.

The next time you open The Moonkeeper’s Cat, I hope you will linger for a moment beside the pond. Look at Miro leaning toward the water. Look at the small frog waiting nearby.