
Little tales of small gestures guide children (and older folks!) through the commitment of friendship just because Frog and Toad are very different creatures doesn’t mean they’ll never see eye-to-eye. A wistful Toad yearns to receive a letter in his mailbox, so Frog writes him one but reveals what the letter says before it can arrive at Toad’s stoop. The new series follows the titular pals through the events of those classic short stories: Cranky Toad refuses to get out of bed in the morning, but an energetic Frog bothers him until he rouses. You peer into it, and you see the stacked foreground, midground, background with a richer scenic environment with selective focus, shadow, and light.”


“It’s like a diorama you’d make in grade school, where you’d take a shoebox and cut a hole to make a scene inside. “It’s almost as if you’re lying on your tummy in your backyard, peering through some blades of grass and looking into a world that’s at ground level,” Hoegee tells The Daily Beast’s Obsessed, speaking over Zoom. As you watch the show, you feel small like Frog and Toad, reclined on the lawn on a warm summer’s day. Rob Hoegee, the showrunner for the new adaptation of the picture books, describes the series in a way that makes you yearn for the past, and for the time when you were young. Though the Frog and Toad books were written for children in the 1970s, they’ve stood the test of time-two best buddies who have become a friendly nugget of nostalgia for multiple generations. The series features art that feels drawn straight out from the hand of late writer and illustrator Arnold Lobel, with stories from all four Frog and Toad books: Frog and Toad Are Friends, Frog and Toad Together, Frog and Toad All Year, and Days With Frog and Toad. We can’t all shrink down to the size of the tiny amphibians-but we can now live vicariously through the beloved characters, thanks to a new kids show heading to Apple TV+ on April 28. What if life’s biggest issues were lacking the willpower to stop eating cookies, goofy bathing suits, and deciding on a flavor of ice cream? Life might be a little easier if we could all pack up our things and move into the world of Frog and Toad.
