Lobel, Arnold. 1971.  Frog and Toad Together.  New York:  Harper Collins Publishers. ISBN: 0064440214

This book is part of the I Can Read series that Lobel wrote many of his beginning chapter books for.  This book was a 1973 Newberry Honor book.  Many young children love the Frog and Toad series of books because they can read them independently.  These are not only fun to read, they are also beginning chapter books.  They are a great bridge from picture books to chapter books.

Frog and Toad Together is a continuation of these friend’s adventures together.  There are five stories in this book.  In this book they are getting rid of dragons, eating all the cookies, and planting flowers together.  Frog and Toad try to do everything together.  For example they try to develop the willpower to stop eating all the cookies until they finally give the cookies to the birds. 

Anita Lobel (p. 684) believed that Arnold Lobel’s characters, Frog and Toad, were charming.  She believes that these books can be considered timeless because the themes of these stories are such that children can easily identify with.  In her opinion these books will continue to be well loved by children.  It seems that she may be correct because even 30 years later children are still counting books from the Frog and Toad series among their favorites.  Frog and Toad are revealed to the reader mostly through their reactions to one another.  These characters are always doing things together and this also lets us know about them.  They are two characters who have a great love for each other and treat one another in a kind way.

This book is a collection of short stories about Frog and Toad.  The plot in these stories quickly moves along so that the reader will not become bored.  The things that they do are things that most people do and are easy to relate to.  The actions are very credible.  The two friends are there to help each other like friends do in real life.  When Toad’s plants will not grow, Frog helps him figure out what he is doing wrong.  When Toad loses his list of things to do for the day, Frog runs after it for him and then sits by him when he realizes it is gone.  The language in this book is very easy to read.  This book tells a story, but uses high-frequency words.  The author uses dialogue that is a little bit stilted as well as some narration.  Frog and Toad say things that we would say, but the language is not quite the same. For example, Toad says, “Look at my list of things to do.”  Frog answers, “Oh that is very nice.”  This is the type of things that a child would say.  Children would just say it in a more real way.  The illustrations that Lobel drew complement the storyline very well.

Lobel wrote many longer books in the I Can Read series.  These are different than his various picture books such as Fables.  In Frog and Toad the characters are developed over many books.  The reader knows that Frog and Toad are best friends who love to do things together.  The theme of this book as well as the others in this series is friendship.  This is one of the reasons that so many children relate so well to Frog and Toad.  Fables is very different because each of the stories is so short and there is not character development like Frog and Toad.  Each of the stories in Fables is teaching a value.  The moral of the story is the theme.  Both of these books do have lots of humor in them.  Frog and Toad are always charming and funny.  Whether they are eating all the cookies or dreaming about a play, the reader is always laughing at them.  Often while reading stories such as “The Bear and the Crow” the reader is going to see some of Lobel’s signature humor.

Lobel, Arnold.  1980.  Fables.  New York:  Harper Collins Publishers. ISBN: 0064430464

Fables was the 1981 Caldecott Medal Award Winner.  This book has a collection of fables and the lessons to be learned from each one.  Many of these fables have characters that do silly things.  For example the baboon cuts holes in his umbrella so that the sun can some through and the fox disguises himself as an apple tree.  Nannette Avery (p. 62) believes that this is a great book to share with children for many reasons.  The children can relate to these fables and the morals that are attached to each.  The illustrations are very colorful.  The animals’ illustrations are a great complement to the story.  Young children love the pictures and they can relate to the animals that Lobel has illustrated.  Children can use a lot of critical thinking and inferencing when reading these fables. 

The reader gets to know each of these characters by the actions that they do.  The reader knows that the bear in “The Bear and the Crow” is very worried about what others think of him because he was easily swayed about what he should wear.  Many of these characters were made to have weaknesses so that the reader can learn the moral of the story.  The silly things that these characters do and learn for example, that as long as we are like the camel in “The Camel Dances” and make ourselves happy we will be happy, amuse the reader.  Each of these stories is a little vignette and the setting is not very important so Lobel does not go into a lot of detail.  The moral of the story is the most important part so Lobel describes the events in more detail.  In most of the stories there is action that tells the reader the moral.  For example to illustrate that children’s conduct will reflect on the parents, Lobel makes the story “The Bad Kangaroo”.  In this story the principal goes to the Kangaroos house to find that the parents throw spitballs, put tacks in chairs, and put glue on door handles just as the little kangaroo does. 

Because this book is a work of Fables the theme of each story is stated outright in its moral at the end of each story.  The entire book is written in a very straightforward fashion so that even if the moral was not stated, the reader could figure it out on his own.  Although these are fables and have serious moral lessons, Lobel goes about writing and illustrating them in an amusing way.