Frog and Toad Are Friends is a picture book written and illustrated by Arnold Lobel in 1970 for Harper and Row, and aimed at children as readers. It launched the Frog and Toad series, the four volumes of which consist of five simple-to-read short stories.
SummariesSpring
A fine spring morning in April, Frog comes rushing to the house of Toad but Toad is not in a hurry to get up. Frog finally gets Toad up out of bed and no sooner does he tell him about the whole new year they will now have together that Toad makes up his mind to go back to bed. As Toad has slept since November he requests Frog to return to him to wake him when it was half past May. Frog does not want to be alone until then, but since Toad had not revised his calendar since November, he takes the opportunity of removing pages of the months until he arrived at April, removing also the page of April, and contrives to get Toad out of bed to admire the beauties of Summer.
The Story
One summer day Toad finds out that Frog is not well and takes him to bed. Frog asks Toad to tell her a story, but Toad has trouble attempting to think of a story to tell his friend. Pacing the porch, sitting on his head, squirting water over his head, and hitting his head on the wall, do not help Toad at all, but the latter leaves him much out of humour. But by this time Frog is feeling better and lets Toad get into bed, so that he can tell him a story. In the middle of the chapter, Frog recounts what Toad did to him but by the time he finishes Toad is asleep.
A Lost Button
Frog and Toad resolve to take a long walk, and when they come back Toad finds that a button has fallen off his jacket. Going back again to the meadow, the woods, the stream they had passed, the two come back to their trail. Frog finds five buttons with the help of a sparrow and a raccoon, but none of them belongs to Toad and his lost button was a big and round and thick and white button with four holes. At length Toad becomes so angry at not finding his button, that he runs home, and finds his lost button had dropped off before the walk. In order to make it up to Frog about the wild goose chase, not only does Toad sew his button back on his jacket, but also sews on the other buttons they found and gives it to Frog the next day.
A Swim
Frog and Toad 3 come down to the stream to go swimming. Toad hides behind a rock to put on his bathing suit but informs Frog, who chooses not to wear a bathing suit to swim, not to look at him until he is in the water as he is sensitive about how he appears in his bathing suit. Frog concurs, and the two head out on their swim. A turtle passes by and Toad urges Frog to order the turtle to move on. But, although Frog describes what is happening, the turtle, together with some lizards, a grass snake, a couple of dragonflies, and a field mouse all want to know what Toad is wearing in his bathing suit. Toad chooses not to get out of the water until they all go but soon he must get out when he starts shivering and sneezing. When he gets out everybody (including Frog) laughs at him. Toad concurs that he looks funny and he quietly collects his clothes and goes home.
The Letter
On his way to pay his friendly visit to Toad, Frog sees Toad standing sad. It is the time when Toad tells him that he has to wait until the mail arrives because he does not receive any mail. Frog feels sad about his friend, so he writes a letter to Toad and asks a snail to take the letter to Toad and deliver it to Toad. Going back to the house of Toad, Frog attempts to convince Toad to wait once more for the mail, and finds himself waiting to receive it. Toad asks him why, Frog says it was in the letter, and explains what he wrote in it, which cheers up Toad so he will wait to get the letter. The snail takes four days to get to the house of Toad, but he finally arrives with the letter of Toad and he was extremely happy to discover that the time it had taken to get the letter was well worth it.
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