A Review of Arnold Lobel’s Frog and Toad Are Friends
The irascible Toad and his best buddy, the ever-optimistic Frog first hopped into our lives in 1970. Fifty years later, they’re still doing it. In “Spring,” we meet Frog, running towards Toad’s place past piles of allegedly melting snow, yelling about spring-time. Toad greets Frog’s excited knocking with the exclamation, “I am not here.” It’s possible, of course, that Toad is hallucinating (did he maybe lick one of those toads?), but probably he’s just tired and cranky. In any case, this is when the life lessons begin. The moral of “Spring” is that it’s okay to trick your friends, if you’re doing it with their best interests at heart. A few pages later Frog has ignored his friend telling him to go away and has entered the house. We finally see Toad, in what might be a cut-away drawing, asleep in bed under many covers. Frog pushes him out of bed, as you do, and into the blinding Spring light on the front porch. After pontificating about all of the cool things they will do together this ...