Frog and Toad

Jon and Mac consider: cookie memes, are Frog and Toad picture books?, mismatched best friends, font talk, "Tossed Salad and Scrambled Eggs," resting frog face, "a certain cruelty in the relationship"

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“The Dream” is the fifth and final story in Frog and Toad Together, the second collection of Frog and Toad stories written and illustrated by Arnold Lobel. It was published in 1972 and won a Newbery Honor.

As usual, Jon and Mac had this conversation over text.

MAC: Hi Jon.

JON: Hi Mac.

MAC: OK so today we’re doing it. We’re doing some Frog and Toad.

JON: I’m nervous!

MAC: Yeah me too.
Why are you nervous?

JON: These are kind of it! Or at least it doesn't get any more “it” than these.

MAC: Yeah. I think these stories are as good as anything else written in English.

Plus there’s the whole meta-narrative of us becoming friends because we talked about Frog and Toad for three hours when we first met.

This is fraught.

Maybe we should just do The Giving Tree.

JON: Ugh.

MAC: Nothing fraught about The Giving Tree!!

No, no, we’re doing “The Dream.”

JON: A biggie!

Even in Frog and Toad terms!

MAC: “The Dream” is one of the most mysterious and intense stories in children’s literature, I think.

It’s the last story in Frog and Toad Together, which has a lot of the stories everyone knows and loves — the one where they eat all the cookies, for example.

Lots of memes about the cookies one.

“Me when I see cookies.”

JON: Clever stuff like that.

MAC: “Normalize whatever this is, in terms of cookies.”

JON: “IYKYK cookies.”

Contrariwise,
not a lot of memes about “The Dream.”
Nobody out here flippantly wading into the psychotic nightmare zone.

MAC: That’s all about to change.

Before we get into it, you may remember that three months ago we told

Carson Ellis

that we were going to do Frog and Toad, and she immediately and matter-of-factly said, “Those aren't picture books.”
And then we said, “We think they are.”
And she said, “Well I look forward to you saying why when you write about them.”
Well…
I guess we better do that.

JON: I submit that at least part of our thinking that Frog and Toad are picture books,
is that we really like them.

MAC: A second thing,
is that we believe a post called Frog and Toad will do absolute numbers.

JON: IYKYK etc.

MAC: BUT!

To indulge Carson’s skepticism, Frog and Toad are early readers, which means that they’re designed to be read by kids, using simple, decodable language, laid out cleanly on the page.

We get into this a little bit in our brief history of early readers in the Go, Dog. Go! post, but the pictures in primers often reinforce the text. You get a little more of the redundancy between words and pictures that good picture books try to avoid.

And I will say that, generally, the illustrations in Frog & Toad are less narrative than in many picture books.

The texts, generally, are complete. They make sense without the illustrations.

(Though we could give some good examples where this is not true.)

CONTRARIWISE:

JON: Well, OK. Like you say, the illustrations do a lot less narrative work than a lot of picture books. But when you think about these books, why you remember them, so much of that, for me, is in the world of the book. Along with these characters and their relationship, and the sound and humor these books have, I think a large part of Lobel’s invention, and an unspoken one, is the world, and the murky rules that govern it.

I’m thinking mainly about scale here I guess? Frog and Toad are frog- and toad-sized. They are small.

They hang out under flowers and stuff.

But they have houses, with chairs, and doors, and cups,

and coats, and fences,

and gardens that grow plants that are the size of plants to people.

Lobel bends the rules of scale, depending on what he needs for any given picture, but the result is hugely appealing.

And he never writes about these rules. They are only ever shown visually. He never describes the locations at all. He never says “Frog lived in a cozy house with a small bed and a fireplace.”

He just shows it.

But this is a huge part of the book.

MAC: Right. The pictures don’t work the way early reader pictures do — they don’t help you decode the words. And they’re not simply decorative, like artwork in an illustrated novel. They’re doing all sorts of diffuse and ambient work that actually takes a ton of pressure off the text. Character stuff, scene-setting stuff (houses, gardens, fences, the forest), clothes.

Frog and Toad’s outfits are a big part of these stories.

I think a lot of our affection for these books, our intimacy with them, is created through our relationship with the pictures.

JON: Right. And this contribution is, by its nature, hard to describe here, but it’s full of active decisions that Lobel needed to make, that give us as an audience space to operate and live in.

MAC: Yeah. They’re also just such expressive and likable characters.

I don’t think we’d care about these two in the same way if they weren’t drawn like this.

JON: Expressiveness is VERY interesting here. Frog and Toad are expressive, but their eyes and features are also kind of naturalistic. They’re not as cartoonish as they could be.

There’s a vague sense of those old taxidermy tableaus they used to make, with like mice and foxes dressed up in little rooms acting things out.

There’s an edge on how Lobel has chosen to render everything. The characters themselves, but also the plants and the land. It’s not neat and tidy. It’s more real and overgrown than that.

Which is also how their relationship is.

MAC: OK.

So Frog and Toad have basically begotten an entire thriving genre of children’s books. You could call it “mismatched best friends,” and usually these friends are mismatched along roughly the same lines Frog and Toad are.
optimist/pessimist.
freewheeling/anxious.

JON: tall/short.

MAC: And these opposites, though they lead to conflict, are complementary and actually pretty stable.

But Frog & Toad’s dynamic is more complicated than that. And their relationship often feels very unstable.

Which I guess brings us to “The Dream.”

JON: Yeah. “The Dream” is kind of the bill coming due, at least for Toad.
Frog’s bill will never come due.
Which is the problem.

MAC: Spoiler alert but—
That is literally how this story ends.

JON: Which is PERFECT.

MAC: OK OK let’s read it!

JON: BEFORE WE DO THOUGH.

MAC: Oh dear god.

JON: It’s worth pointing out that another amazing thing that Lobel does in these books is build a relationship, a messy one, over the course of what seems to be a collection of disconnected small and funny stories, and then, at the end of at least two of the four books, he writes a story that cashes that relationship in.

“The Dream” needs the other, seemingly lighter stories, to make sense of the work it’s doing.

MAC: Right, so it is the fifth and final story in this collection. And in the stories that precede “The Dream,” Frog tends to be functional and charming. Toad is neurotic and flailing.

And by the end of a “classic” Frog and Toad story, they manage to reach some equilibrium.

So in “A List,” e.g., Toad is beholden to his to-do list, but paralyzed when it blows away. Frog urges Toad to run and catch it, but Toad refuses, because chasing the list wasn’t on the list. So Frog sets off alone, but can’t retrieve it, and so returns to just sit with Frog and do nothing. There is a whole page of them doing nothing (bold choice for the first story in your early reader), until Frog finally suggests going to sleep. Toad remembers that going to sleep is on his list, writes “Go to sleep” in the dirt, and feels satisfied. Frog and Toad fall asleep next to each other, content.

(We only know how content they are because of the picture.)

(Carson.)

Also, in that picture, it’s notable that Toad is leaning against Frog.

And I would say that although the ending of the story is very satisfying, the equilibrium here feels provisional, because there’s a deep and irresolvable imbalance at the heart of Frog and Toad’s relationship.
Toad needs Frog more than Frog needs him.

JON: But in kind of the same way that Lobel never lays down definitive physical rules of the world, neither character ever really adds up the dynamic in any definitive way, to themselves. Toad never says, “why am I such a mess? why does Frog just know how to do this?” and Frog certainly never says, “what is Toad’s deal?”

MAC: No, we have to do it in dreams.

JON: It’s worth saying, too, though

MAC: Oh my god.

JON: that even if, while he was awake, Toad DID feel it in him to finally lay it down, he would never. He’s way too scared of losing Frog. And Frog would never because… he’s just not that invested.

MAC: Let’s do the story.

JON: OK OK.

MAC: All right, first of all, what’s that title font. Cooper?

JON: I’ll say it’s Cooper and then get absolutely torn apart in the comments.

But looks like Cooper.

MAC: So Jon says it’s Cooper.
And it’s brown. One process thing about these books: They were printed in three colors — black, brown, and green. So everything is in the world is either “Frog Green” or “Toad Brown” or a color made by combining those two shades.

JON: Also, I guess this is common to early readers, but look how welcoming the body text is. His line breaks are so short, and the typesetting is so inviting. I remember thinking of these books when I started writing, just trying to not scare anyone off when they open the page. You look at this and you’re already reading it, before you even decide to.

MAC: The writing works the same way too, so clear and welcoming.

“Toad was asleep, and he was having a dream. He was on a stage, and he was wearing a costume.”

JON: Man oh man.

MAC: This is a wild departure from the rules of all other Frog and Toad stories.

But Lobel very clearly explains what’s going on.

And he puts “costume” on its own line, because it’s a tricky word.

Toad’s costume is ridiculous (and we only know this from the pictures!)
He’s dressed as some extravagant 18th century cavalier.
Big feather.
HUUUUUUUUUGE FEATHER.
I’m not a dream expert…
I’m not a Freud expert…

JON: What’s amazing about it too is that as the story goes on, you realize that, to Toad, this is the best thing anyone’s ever worn.
It’s not ironic. It’s not over the top. It’s Ideal Toad.

MAC: And it’s Frog Green.

JON: Oh snap.

MAC: Then a “strange voice from far away” comes in and says “PRESENTING THE GREATEST TOAD IN ALL THE WORLD.”

This is also pretty sad.

Man, this story is sad.

JON: Even just this spread is so damn sad.

MAC: Not too late to do The Giving Tree.

JON: Nothin’ sad about that one.

MAC: Here is what Toad would love to hear about himself, right?

Just as this is the best outfit he could ever imagine, this is how he’d like to be described.

By the narrator of a story, and by Frog.

JON: Yeah, his subconscious can't even decide who he wants to be describing him that way. It doesn’t matter. It’s just some strange voice.

MAC: Before we move on, I think it’s important to say that this spread is also funny.

Toad looks funny.

It gets a laugh. Lobel is so good at getting a laugh out of putting Toad in a ridiculous outfit.
(“The Swim” in Frog and Toad Are Friends depends on Lobel’s ability to do this.)

JON: Even just the first line, “Toad was asleep, and he was having a dream.” next to that illustration is very, very funny.

MAC: This page is sad, eerie, and funny all at once.
This is the kind of complexity Lobel is able to conjure from such simple ingredients, again and again.
Different stories achieve a different mix (though sad and funny are almost always both in there).

JON: If the first spread was sad and complex already, this second spread is really getting spread one to hold its beer.

This spread introduces the idea that, as Toad is being amazing, Frog gets smaller.

AND he's shouting, “Hooray for Toad!”

MAC: Right. The basic mechanism of this story is that Toad will do something amazing, ask Frog if he can do that amazing thing, and, when Frog answers “no,” Frog gets smaller.

The simplistic, less interesting reading of this story would be that it’s something about bragging, or being unkind to your friend, and making him feel small.

But “The Dream” resists that interpretation right from the start.

Because the first time Frog gets smaller, it’s just for applauding for his friend on stage.

JON: Yeah, Toad’s amazingness is what’s doing it.

It’s a zero sum game, and Toad is fine with that.

More than fine.

MAC: Yeah, and there is something to this dynamic, Toad being the star, and Frog being an audience member, an appreciator of Toad’s amazingness, that is a threat to Frog’s entire existence.

Or maybe Toad’s sense of who Frog is.

JON: Or at least Frog’s existence as Toad sees it.

Yeah.

MAC: Adding to the sadness —

and funniness —

I don’t think Toad can really play the piano.

JON: He’s never tried, as far as we’ve seen.

MAC: He does not have one in his house.

The books don’t mention it.

And although I could say the same thing about Frog…

I wouldn’t be surprised if he could play.

JON: So there isn’t even anything Toad would like to be good at that he’s currently working on.

MAC: Frog seems like one of those guys who gets excited when there’s a piano in the room and sits down and, like, plays the Frasier theme perfectly.

JON: Hahaha now who’s revealing dreams.

MAC: Damn.

JON: Coulda gone with any song.

Five hundred years of piano music.

MAC: OK OK next spread.

Here is something we know Toad cannot do.

JON: I submit that “AND HE WILL NOT FALL DOWN” is the funniest line in the book.

I want that as a tattoo.

Also, the recto here is BRUTAL. So far Lobel has been pretty subtle on Frog’s shrinking. It's almost imperceptible in the pictures and you kind of have to read it in the text to know that it’s happening.

But here Lobel focuses on it. He gives it three beats.

MAC: It’s horrifying!

It’s so deeply upsetting to see Frog helpless. To the point of the story, it’s contrary to everything we love about him.

JON: And this is also where Lobel’s naturalistic treatment of them pays off big. Frog could look sad here, and maybe he is, but also this is kind of resting frog face.

MAC: Resting frog face.

Jon.

JON: IT IS.

MAC: “AND HE WILL BE WONDERFUL.”

Even his inner doubting voice is getting more grandiose.

JON: Incredible escalation. Again, just heartbreaking.

Because you know that is Toad’s word for Frog. He’s never said it, but that’s what he thinks Frog is. Frog is wonderful.

Frog leaves Toad’s house, and Toad watches him go, and thinks, “Frog is wonderful.”

MAC: “Frog, can you be as wonderful as this?”

JON: And he’s gone.

MAC: And what a beautiful and complicated way to say that he disappeared.

“Frog was so small that he could not be seen or heard.”

The early reader’s demand for simple language has pushed Lobel into expressing something unbelievably complex.

There is no prettier or more sophisticated or more clear way to describe what’s happened here.

JON: I think that’s what Lobel showed us in these: what can be extracted.

MAC: Also, the text doesn’t mention it, but as Frog has been shrinking, Toad has been growing, or at least he’s been appearing to get bigger.

He looks gigantic when he’s dancing.

JON: Yes. He’s a glowing ball onstage now.

He barely fits into the vignette.

MAC: And now, tucked into the lower right, calling for Frog, he’s little again.

JON: And this is where it’s made unmistakably clear, if there was any doubt. What has happened to Frog is Toad’s fault. It wasn’t just something that happened in the dream while he was being wonderful. Toad made it happen, and he knows it.

MAC: “Frog, what have I done?”

But again, I just want to be clear that it wasn’t just Toad’s gloating that made Frog shrink.

Toad’s being amazing — more amazing than Frog— somehow made Frog’s existence impossible.

We never hear that Frog felt bad about himself.

He was cheering for Toad the whole time!

His cheering probably made him shrink faster.

JON: Yeah, the dream does not take liberties with Frog, and make Frog a villain. Toad isn’t capable of that.

MAC: And now things get even worse.

The previous spread was so intense, but Lobel wants to turn the screw one more time. He’s merciless.

The voice is coming in again at the top, it just feels out of control.

If we see “the strange voice from far away” as a narrator’s voice, as Lobel’s, then it’s finishing its job. “Toad, you wanted a Frog and Toad story where you are super capable and just do stuff well? OK, here you go.”

And Toad has to stop it.

JON: It’s important to remember, especially when it comes to Lobel, how carefully he chose his words in these books. In the interview we posted a little while ago, and in other instances too, he remembers specific words he needed to use because he just couldn’t find another one. Writing for young children, you’re often in the business of sweating a word for a long time. And then, on this page, he says, “‘Shut up!’ screamed Toad.”

MAC: It’s shocking.

Toad is screaming at himself, at his ambition, his vanity, his aspirations, and at the book itself.

JON: This is 1971. This is the second of these books, and they are big — 1970s big, which we will never really know again. I imagine there was a phone call about this line.

MAC: I dunno. These were Ursula Nordstrom books.

She probably just took a huge drag on her cigarette and nodded sagely.

JON: “Tight.”

Yeah maybe there was a phone call but it was just to see if he was OK. “I love it, Arnold. …How you doing over in Brooklyn? You good?”

And then, after the screaming, the story really lets go. The whole thing comes apart.

MAC: “Toad was spinning in the dark.” Again, clear early reader language that describes the action and diagnoses an entire mental state.

And then, the heartbreaker:

“Come back, Frog,” he shouted.

“I will be lonely!”

JON: Unreal.

MAC: Hoo.

JON: Not, “I will miss you.”

As much as we know Toad is dedicated to Frog himself, and as much as this story is about that, this line even further complicates Toad.

MAC: It’s a surprising turn: Frog has been shrunk and disappeared. But the story is not about a terrible thing happening to Frog. A terrible thing has happened to Toad.

JON: Frog and Toad’s relationship is a lot of things at once. And Toad’s attachment is genuine to Frog, but also, here, underneath, is also a very basic fear of being alone at all.

MAC: Meanwhile, microscopic Frog is probably already making friends with a paramecium.

JON: “I dunno, he was playing piano or something… pass the sugar?”

MAC: In Frog and Toad, we very rarely get an illustration on a page with no text.

Look at that.

So terrifying.

But also, it’s funny.

JON: The choice of making the void sit at the back of the theater is so interesting and cool. Just turning the whole box of the dream sideways.

MAC: Yeah, the dream is allowing Lobel to work in this symbolic illustrative space, and he's great at it.

JON: Partly because he keeps it pretty small. He doesn’t get lost in grandiosity. Toad spinning in a nightmare dream void could easily let him get visually operatic, and he knows how, but he keeps the scale of things in check. The theater is still cute in its proportions, the textures are still warm and soft. He hasn’t broken the world, or our belief in it.

MAC: And now, relief!
Kind of.

JON: A fun experiment here is to try and read Frog’s lines on this page as like, bored, already.

Because you can.

MAC: “Are you your own right size?” asked Toad.

“Yes, I think so,” said Frog.

No follow-ups.

“I hope he doesn't tell me about his dream again.”

JON: Not even an, “Oh Toad…”

To be clear, we don’t think Frog is actually sounding like this, or even for sure feeling like it.

MAC: No.

JON: But there’s the tiniest bit of room.

MAC: Yes.

JON: There almost always is, in these stories.

MAC: And he doesn’t ask.

JON: No!

MAC: He will never know about this dream.

JON: And he doesn’t say WHY he always comes over. Toad is gushing. “I’m so glad you came over.”

It would be so easy for Frog to add, “I always do. I wanted to see you.”

But he doesn’t add that.

MAC: And there is something reassuring about that constancy, the way, for Frog, it is automatic.

But it’s also sad.

Especially after what we’ve just learned from our peek into Toad’s psyche.

And now things are back to the way they’re supposed to be. Big breakfasts. Fine long days together. And a picture of Frog literally leapfrogging over Toad.

JON: It might be getting too analytic here, but in this picture, Toad is looking up at Frog. He is so damn happy.

MAC: “He is wonderful.”

JON: And it would’ve taken the same amount of energy for Lobel to draw Frog looking down at Toad.

And he’s looking out.

“I love pancakes.”

MAC: “Pancakes are wonderful.”

JON: When you and I first met, we talked about these stories, and the thing we both valued in them, one of the things anyway, was that Lobel never resolved the problems in this relationship. Toad will never tell Frog about this dream. Frog will never say, “Toad that’s crazy! I’ll always be here for you.” We both remembered that, even as kids, this was familiar to us. We had had friendships like this already, where it felt imbalanced one way or another. And Lobel’s conception of these kinds of friendships, at least here, is that that’s just the way it is. It’s an examination of that kind of relationship, not advice on how to fix it.

But it hurts when things are like this. And a lot of the stories, like you said, are sad that way. But “The Dream” is where it turns. Where Lobel finally gets mad about how much it hurts.

It’s a furious story.

MAC: Lobel knew it, too.

There’s that bit in the interview we posted, where he talks about stopping the series.

Rollins: “Is there another Frog and Toad in the plans?”

Lobel: “No, I’m not going to do any more. I don’t want them to become another commodity on the American scene. But it also occurred to me, when I was doing the last one, that there was a certain cruelty in the relationship, in Frog being the controlling one and Toad being controlled.”

JON: It’s funny that this “occurs” to him two books AFTER the one where he dream-murders his friend.

“Hmmm.”

MAC: I think it’s the cruelty, or at least this imbalance, this wobble in Frog and Toad’s orbit, that makes the books work, that makes these stories so profound. They get miscategorized by adults as a depiction of a perfect friendship, when they’re really a perfect depiction of a flawed friendship — a beautiful friendship but sometimes a cruel one too.

JON: They do have good days!

Some of the stories are about excellent days.

MAC: Yeah! But the book’s not called “Excellent Days with Frog and Toad.”

This complexity, I think it’s important to stress, is something kids understand. When I was in elementary school, I had one friend. And I remember, when he was home sick, I was lost. Socially, because I didn’t know what to do at recess, but also, I would sit there wondering if there was something wrong with me.

JON: It’s a big part of what we like to write about, or use, anyway, this contention that kids understand complex relationships, that they have them.

For a long time, kids do not choose who they spend time with, especially socially. They are thrown into rooms of other kids and told to figure it out.

You’re very lucky if you come out of those rooms with a friend.

And all of the other interactions are as complex as anything adults have.

MAC: Lobel talks about this too —

Rollins: “It seems to me sometimes that the most overused word in children’s literature reviews is ‘delightful.’”

Lobel: “Yes. And yet children’s books, the best of them, are not delightful. My favorites, anyway, strike deep. The artists that do the best ones are able to make them delightful on one level, but that’s just the whipped cream on top. Underneath there is something much more. William Steig, for instance, is a great favorite of mine. His drawings look so effortless, but his books deal with moral issues, moral decisions, that are really profound. And I think children sense this underpinning, and that the parents like the books too.”

JON: Man oh man.

MAC: And of course, Lobel’s fear, that Frog and Toad would become commodities, has been realized.

They’ve been co-opted by the Coziness Industrial Complex, mascots for tea parties and little waistcoats and hanging with your bestie.

“Me when I see cookies,” etc.

But the actual stories are much thornier, and much tougher to wrangle, and it’s the kids keeping them alive — who are out there doing the wrangling.

JON: (The cookie story is one of the “excellent days” btw.)

Yeah. That’s it. That’s what I remember recognizing, even in second grade. These books are about the war that you felt all the time.

And I was not and am not an especially good recognizer. This isn’t some hidden secret thing for the especially astute. I think most kids got it, and get it.

MAC:

JON: IYKYK.