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Gay Dad

 I think that Arnold Lobel and James Marshall were in dialogue with each other; Marshall alludes to Lobel in "The Special Gift," and Lobel dedicates "Frog and Toad All Year" to Marshall.

I think Marshall sometimes made a point of "rewriting" Lobel.

Take "Christmas Eve." This is the Frog-and-Toad where Toad suffers with his broken clock. He can't tell how late Frog is for dinner; he just knows that it's dark outside. Unmoored, Toad becomes panicky; he thinks that Frog has fallen in a hole or fallen prey to a beast. Then Frog arrives. He has been delayed because of gift-wrapping; he needed to find the right ribbon for Toad's present, which is a new and functional clock.

Four years later, Marshall did something shockingly different with the same raw materials. He *begins* his story, "The Clock," with one friend giving another friend a clock. But--in Marshall's subversive imagination--this is exactly the *wrong* gift. What happens when the clock is bulky, and it makes an obnoxious sound? How can you respond gracefully, without offending your friend?

I'm not saying Marshall's scenario is "better" than Lobel's....I'm just saying....Here is one main story set-up, and here are two wonderful and idiosyncratic (and canonical!) ways of making art.

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