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WARTON AND MORTON by Russell Erickson

WARTON AND MORTON

By

Pub Date: Aug. 9th, 1976
Publisher: Lothrop, Lee & Shepard

Adventuresome Warton finally gets brother Morton out of the kitchen but their simple hiking trip is soon interrupted by a flash flood. Morton is washed away by the deluge and Warton's one-toad search party is delayed when he meets up with some folksy muskrats who (after pronouncing him inedible) invite him to join in their annual Spring Dance and Festival. Later, when the muskrats march on the beavers upstream to slug out an argument over water rights, Warton finds Morton giving cooking lessons in the enemy camp and the two toads manage to negotiate a truce. The outcome is a diplomatic success at best--and disappointing after Warton's free-ranging odyssey in A Toad for Tuesday (1974), but the toads' taste in domestic arrangements (moccasins of soft newt leather, fried termites in dandelion sauce for dinner) and their love of music (whether Morton's own harmonica playing or the country sound of the Muskrat Mama's Banjo Band) establish them as individual personalities whose idea of the good life is modestly discriminating.