sitting alone together

Courtesy of the Arnold Lobel estate, via The New Yorker.

bought arnold lobel’s days with frog and toad for my nephew’s birthday — i’d forgotten most of it, but what a heartbreaker. from the new yorker’s “‘Frog and Toad’: An Amphibious Celebration of Same-Sex Love”:

When reading children’s books as children, we get to experience an author’s fictional world removed from the very real one he or she inhabits. But knowing the strains of sadness in Lobel’s life story gives his simple and elegant stories new poignancies. On the final page of “Alone,” Frog and Toad, having cleared up their misunderstanding, sit contently on the island looking into the distance, each with his arm around the other. Beneath the drawing, Lobel writes, “They were two close friends, sitting alone together.”