When our girls were younger, we always made a point of reading with them and it has been such a wonderful adventure seeing the ways reading has influenced them and the ways it created some special core memories. If you’re a fan of Inside Out and Inside Out 2, then you understand that core memories stem from significant moments in the main character, Riley’s young life and help create her sense of identity. We are definitely fans of Inside Out and this idea of how significant memories and experiences contribute to who we are and are becoming. While some of their identity is related to the act of reading, more of what I’ve seen in their lives is the way favorite stories and characters help shape their ideas and core memories and their identity.
For example, where I often sang the same 3-4 songs to our girls at bedtime, my husband often told them 3-4 of their favorite stories, stories he’d memorized from their favorite books, including Good Night Moon, Jamberry, and several Frog & Toad stories, especially, The Lost Button, and Spring. We introduced many picture books over the years, but there were some that our girls returned to again and again, including Frog & Toad. So, when I stumbled across a book about Arnold Lobel in the library last week, I knew we needed to include that in our unschooling adventures this week. To say all four of us thoroughly enjoyed it would not be an exaggeration.
As we read about Lobel’s life and what led him to write the stories he did as well as how he developed and tweaked his artistic style, I loved hearing my girls’ familiar refrain, that’s so relatable! But it was when we reached the part that talked about Lobel writing the Frog and Toad stories, that’s when I think my girls really saw themselves in both Lobel and in those two iconic characters. Emmy Kastner, the writer and illustrator of the book, described how Lobel gave Frog and Toad the stories from his own life, including being a good friend, feeling lonely, being consumed with worry or being thankful. Kastner writes that Lobel “tenderly put his entire being into the friendship of a frog and a toad.”
Of course the more we read about those favorite stories, the more nostalgia we all began to experience, so much so that, when we finished reading the Lobel book, my 17 year old asked me if I knew where our copies of the Frog and Toad books were, adding that if I’d gotten rid of them, she would have to “sell my left kidney on the black market.” I knew I was safe from such a happenstance because I’d recently been organizing and indexing some of their childhood books and knew exactly where it was (unfortunately, one of the other ones had been kept in a different storage unit and ended up with mold & mildew in its pages and had to be thrown away). With the book we’d been able to keep, I knew there was also still a copy of a 45 record with the recording of Arnold Lobel reading three of the four stories.
I love that my girls immediately headed upstairs for the book and the record and, because our 17 year old has a record player, they were able to put it on and listen to the author himself tell them some of their favorite stories involving Frog and Toad. It was a delightful moment and their smiles and giggles were both heartfelt and heart-touching, in that they touched my heart with that special kind of joy steeped in memory and nostalgia. For a moment, I was transported back in time, watching my 6 and 4 year olds spending time with two beloved story characters. As many a parent will say, the days can be long when our kids are little, but the years pass quickly. Having a brief pause, a small window back into those early years, was a beautiful and unexpected gift. I love that I can see those two young girls still in these two remarkable young women.
Even more, I love that I can see how those years, our shared experiences, and the characters and stories of their childhood have helped shape them into these two amazing teenagers. I love that I can see in them the often impetuous and sometimes worried and overreactive Toad, but I can also see in them the generous and kind-hearted and encouraging Frog. I love that I get to watch the ways these two incredible young women not only navigate the world around them but the way they add their own beauty and creative wonders to it. Truly, that is a core memory that influences me every day.