Last week, The New Yorker published an article entitled “‘Frog and Toad:’ An Amphibious Celebration Of Same-Sex Love,” which discussed some of the personal history of Arnold Lobel, the series creator. In short, Lobel’s daughter, Adrianne Lobel, stated that she believes Frog and Toad to be the beginning of her father’s coming out as gay.
Arnold Lobel came out to his family in 1974, four years after the first Frog and Toad book was published. He was 41. In contrast, I first came out to friends in 2009, when I was 13 years old. While Lobel negotiated his sexuality in part by creating art, I did so by consuming said art. I would devour any media with even the most remote of queer themes. When my high school German teacher told us that all teenagers could relate to "Spring Awakening," I saw girls in the back of the class roll their eyes. And yet I consumed the passages we were assigned at a fever pitch, identifying intensely with the struggles of the characters to fit in and live in a society that can be alienating and cruel. In middle school, a friend loaned me "Annie On My Mind," and I read the whole book in secret, using a flashlight under my covers at night when the house was still. When I returned the book and my friend remarked at how quickly I had finished it, all I could think about was the terror of explaining such a book to my parents if they happened upon it. I spent my teenage years in the world of slash fan-fiction, exploring my gender and sexuality through onscreen male friendships like those of Star Trek’s Kirk and Spock. Queer media in all its forms -- movies, television, books -- were my liferafts growing up, the thing that helped keep my head above water when everything from the judgement of my peers and the painful ignorance of my own family was threatening to drown me.
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Maybe it is no surprise that I also loved the Frog and Toad stories as a child. My mother owned several collections, and some of my earliest literary memories are of her reading to my brother and I, and us laughing about the amphibians’ antics. To this day, when someone mentions Frog and Toad, it evokes a smile and fond memories of my younger days. The Frog and Toad stories are one of the holdovers from my childhood that I can appreciate with similar fondness today, and something I hope to pass on to my own children in the future. Maybe, in some small way, it will help them navigate the world and instill in them the same love of literature that has saved my life over and over again.
As I was writing this, I watched the first few seconds of an ad on youtube, and something in the tone of the video made me hesitate, instead of instantly clicking the skip button. The Deutsche Bahn ad shows a dedicated soccer fan, traveling back and forth to games and cheering on his favorite player. At the end of the ad, the fan comes off the train to find the player there waiting, and the two men tenderly embrace before walking off the platform hand in hand.
Arnold Lobel died of AIDs in 1987. He was 54 years old. “Think of all the stories we missed,” says Adrianne Lobel, but I don't want to. Today I am thinking of all the stories we have, and their uncanny ability to find us exactly when we need them.
