Frog in Love by Max Velthuijs is the story of Frog, who has felt strange all week, and is trying to figure out what is wrong. He feels like crying and laughing at the same time, and that “there’s something going thump-thump” inside him. When he tells Hare about how he is feeling, Hare tells him that he is in love.
Frog is very excited to learn that he is in love, and tells Piglet, who asks him, “Who are you in love with?” Frog hadn’t thought about that question, but quickly he responds that he is in love with a “pretty, nice, lovely white duck.” Piglet tells Frog that a frog can’t be in love with a duck, but Frog ignores him. Frog begins anonymously leaving gifts for Duck, but he can’t bring himself to speak to her. He decides to impress her by breaking the world high jump record, but it is when he falls and injures himself that Duck comes into his life.
How do you know what you are feeling inside? Can you feel like “crying and laughing at the same time?” If so, how can that be? Can you love someone you don’t know? Do two people have to be alike to love each other? Do we love people because of their accomplishments? What makes us love another person?

Jana Mohr Lone is the director and founder of the University of Washington Center for Philosophy for Children, an academic research center dedicated to research and practice in philosophy for children and philosophy of childhood, and she is an Affiliate Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Washington. Jana is the author of Seen and Not Heard (2021) and The Philosophical Child (2012). She co-authored the textbook Philosophy in Education: Questioning and Dialogue in Schools (2016) and co-edited the collection of essays Philosophy and Education: Introducing Philosophy to Young People (2012). Since 1995 she has taught philosophy in classrooms from preschool to college and beyond. A frequent writer and speaker about precollege philosophy, Jana is the founding president of PLATO (Philosophy Learning and Teaching Organization) and the founding editor-in-chief of the journal Questions: Philosophy for Young People. Follow her on Twitter: @JanaMohrLone