FROG AND TOAD ALL YEAR

Lobel's peerless, though much imitated, animal comrades do a little borrowing of their own here when Frog goes around the corner to look for spring, recalling Clifton's Boy Who Didn't Believe in Spring (1973); in this case we can't consider Lobel's more conventional rustic setting an improvement, but Frog does make the search his own. In fall Frog and Toad rake each other's leaves for a surprise, but the wind undoes the jobs before either is aware of the other's favor; elsewhere the friendship seems to have settled down to a kind of mellow harmony. In the winter Toad, riding in front, does a fine job of steering a sled until he realizes that the more experienced Frog has fallen off; in summer he becomes covered with such a mess of sticks and leaves, stuck to the two ice cream cones that have melted all over him, that he scares off everyone but Frog, who recognizes him under the gunk; and at Christmas he worries when his friend is late to dinner, until Frog shows up with a gift. We miss some of the resonant psychological heft of this pair's previous experiences, but Frog and Toad can still transform the most ordinary seasonal activities into celebrations.