Stop it.
Seriously.
Leave ‘Frog and Toad’ alone. Not everything has to have a damn political agenda.
Arnold Lobel's “Frog and Toad” endures as an amphibious celebration of same-sex love: https://t.co/cUXriRU8gO pic.twitter.com/cnry4W6TVB
— The New Yorker (@NewYorker) July 3, 2018
‘Frog and Toad’ is just about a frog and a toad who are friends.
Deal with it.
From The New Yorker:
Frog and Toad are “of the same sex, and they love each other,” she told me. “It was quite ahead of its time in that respect.” In 1974, four years after the first book in the series was published, Lobel came out to his family as gay. “I think ‘Frog and Toad’ really was the beginning of him coming out,” Adrianne told me. Lobel never publicly discussed a connection between the series and his sexuality, but he did comment on the ways in which personal material made its way into his stories.
When reading children’s books as children, we get to experience an author’s fictional world removed from the very real one he or she inhabits. But knowing the strains of sadness in Lobel’s life story gives his simple and elegant stories new poignancies. On the final page of “Alone,” Frog and Toad, having cleared up their misunderstanding, sit contently on the island looking into the distance, each with his arm around the other. Beneath the drawing, Lobel writes, “They were two close friends, sitting alone together.”
The stories of frog and toad are lovely, wonderful, and remind us all what it means to be a friend. This doesn’t need to be about anything MORE, leave the stories alone.
Yes let’s send the message that it’s impossible for boys to just be friends and have a close relationship without there being an unexplored same sex attraction going on. And we wonder why our youth is so screwed up. Can’t we just let them be kids….
— Rosy Red Virginia Belle (@kt1varose629) July 3, 2018
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What the firey rose said.
https://twitter.com/kaijubushi/status/1014112546289307648
— ImpatientlyWaitingFor⚾️ (@buckeyecapsfan) July 3, 2018
https://twitter.com/Gray_Wolfs76/status/1014127508499951616
Or it could just be about two friends of different races.
— David Walsh, Jr. (@jeffersonianguy) July 3, 2018
Perhaps we should let stories speak for themselves and stop using them to push our own agendas?
Call us crazy.
— Caleb Box (@calebbox) July 3, 2018
Exactly.
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