Frogs and Toads in Art and Storytelling

In stories, mice are to rats as frogs are to toads. Unlike hares and rabbits, toads and frogs are actually the same category of animal, but one has garnered a better reputation. I’ve heard ‘toad’ used as an insult, but I’ve only ever heard ‘froggy’ to describe the shape of someone’s mouth. Neither is especially complimentary, but frogs seem cuter.

not this one though?

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The Evening Star, Independence, Kansas, September 10, 1904

Frogs in a pond, by Watanabe Shotei, ca. 1930s

Frog Pond by Chris Wormell

The Real Difference Between Frogs And Toads

Wheras the categories of ‘mice’ and ‘rats’ encompass many different small mammals who may or may not be closely related to each other, toads are a subcategory of frog.

Generally speaking, whether we call an amphibian a frog or a toad will depend on a few visible markers:

	MORE FROGGY	MORE TOADLY
SKIN	moist and slimy	dry and bumpy
BODY	long and lean	short and squat
EGGS	in a mass	in a chain
HABITAT	wetter	drier
MOVEMENT	leapy	crawly

So how is this distinction useful for storytellers making use of anthropomorphised amphibians?

European Fire-Bellied Toad and Yellow-Bellied Toad from Brehms Tierleben Vol 1, illustrator Joseph Fleischmann, Leipzig, Vienna Bibliographisches Institut 1920

I’m thinking slime. I think flies, quick movements combined with general sloth. I think of The Frog Princess, literally and metaphorically ‘slimy’, imposing himself on a young woman knowing full well she doesn’t want him anywhere near her.

The Quack Frog

Toads As Mark Of Healthy Boyhood

Especially in nineteenth and twentieth century children’s books, boys and frogs are linked. The painting by Dirk Sargeant below is an excellent visual depiction of what I’m talking about:

The boy takes a natural and mischievous delight in these disgusting creatures, usually while a disapproving girl or woman looks on. In Charlotte’s Web, E. B. White wrote a brother (Avery) who is the stereotypically perfect representation of rural boyhood — part of that requires a fascination with frogs.

Though the famous nursery rhyme below doesn’t mention frogs and toads exactly, they fit into the same category as snails:

What are little boys made of?
What are little boys made of?
  Snips and snails
  And puppy-dogs’ tails
That’s what little boys are made of

What are little girls made of?
What are little girls made of?
  Sugar and spice
  And everything nice [or “all things nice”]
That’s what little girls are made of

Toads are basically gross-out material, related to Bakhtin’s ideas about bodily discomfort.

The Posh Dandy Toad

I believe the underlying idea in this archetype is that the ugly middle-aged man tries to improve himself by dressing in a way his gentlemanly salary allows. The juxtaposition is the joke, and another take on ‘making a silk purse out of a sow’s ear’ or ‘lipstick on a pig’. The best-known example of this kind of toad is probably Toad from The Wind In The Willows, published 1908. The illustration below is also from around that time.

A well dressed toad. Drawing by G. Hope Tait, c1900

Beatrix Potter’s The Tale of Jeremy Fisher was published in 1893, and it may have been Potter who ushered in the age of the well-dressed toad in children’s stories. Her publishers weren’t confident a slimy amphibian could be empathetic, so Potter was required to compensate for Jeremy’s ugliness by painting unusually beautiful backgrounds. It was Potter’s book which proved even a toady type thing can be sympathetic.

The Adventures of Jerry Muskrat published 1914 then 1942

FROGS AS MULTITUDES

Like cats and rats, frogs are sometimes depicted in great numbers. When frogs and toads have a bumper breeding season, they really have a bumper breeding season.

The Concert of Frogs from the poem Liliana 1907 written and illustrated by Apel Les Mestres, Catalan poet and illustrator

WHAT DID AESOP HAVE TO SAY ABOUT FROGS AND TOADS?

Aesop’s Fables London Adam & Charles Black 1912 Artist – Charles Folkard – The Proud Frog

Cute Frogs

Make any slimy thing cuter by giving them clothes. Extend cuteness further by depicting them in mid-action, putting on those clothes, behaving like humans. The cutest thing you can do with a frog is to make it behave like a child human.

Frog by a Dandelion with Flies (1877–1938) by Jan van Oort

Frog’s Outing — a Japanese picture book depicting a quirky, likeable frog character. Likeable frogs tend to have human eyeballs. Amphibian eyes are inherently off-putting to humans, as they look like the eyes of snakes.

FROGS AS AGILE ACROBATIC CARNIVALESQUE CHARACTERS

My Head-to-Toe Book by Jean Tymns, illustrated by Tibor Gergely (1974)

According to a Menominee Native American story, the reason frogs are more vocal in the spring is because they are mourning those among them that did not survive the winter.#SuperstitionSat pic.twitter.com/h9ggrEke5M
— Fabulinus (prophet) (@Fabulinus6) March 20, 2021

Header illustration: Frederick Stuart Church (1842–1924) ~ Frogs and Mosquitos summer concert ~ Harpers

Cara connects across the globe with the Curator of Amphibian and Reptile Conservation Biology at the Australian Museum, Dr. Jodi Rowley (she discovered “Helen’s Flying Frog” among others). They talk about Jodi’s biodiversity field work in Cambodia and Vietnam, with a specific focus on conservation efforts to counter the extinction threats facing frogs and toads worldwide.

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