What does リスとび refer to in this children's book? "リスとび"

Question

I am currently going over a translated children's picture book, お掃除を覚えたがらないリスのゲルランゲ; it seemed to have gotten popular in Japanese children's literature, but not anywhere else; I can not find the original French title or even if it was translated into English.

Regardless, I am focusing on a particular play of words; in the introduction, 11 squirrels are said to live with their grandmother in a beech tree. They do a lot of children's games in the forest:

みんな（１１匹の子リス）朝から夕方まで、日の当たる木の枝を伝って、かくれんぼうや、鬼ごっこや、リスとびをして遊びました。

My focus is on "リスとび"; なわとび is jump-rope, and I found 二人とび online, which refers to using one jump-rope for two people. However, what could "リス" be substituting for? I am trying to think what squirrels in a forest would use to jump-rope with. My thinking is coming from the fact that there is a specific reason they did not just opt for "なわとび," thinking there is some children's game I am not aware of.

I could be overthinking it, but does anyone have any ideas?

EDIT: Noting a comment, I could be overthinking things. Here is the illustration on the page for reference:

Answer 1

Note that this is a guess without evidence

The de facto standard for leapfrog in Japanese are 蛙跳び (frog) or 馬跳び (horse). Since we're dealing with squirrels here the author simply used リス.

EDIT Added strike-thru because apparently 馬跳び is the standard over 蛙跳び. I initially thought 蛙跳び was the widely used one over 馬跳び.

The drawing shows the squirrels lined up in a formation which resembles leapfrog, but it could be a coincidence.

EDIT

Assuming without evidence again this page maintaining integrity from original, your answer to "What does リスとび refer to in this children's book?" with the given context from a Japanese perspective may be answered in this forum, but to get to the bottom of this you might want to consult french.stackexchange.com. The drawing in that page looks like leapfrog to me tho.

Answer 2

Have you ever watched squirrels in trees? They hide from each other and then pounce. They chase each other maddeningly quickly in circles around the tree or even up and down the tree in seeming defiance of gravity. They jump from branch to branch and tree to tree. Even the picture shows two squirrels jumping through the air.

The author leads with two common childhood games かくれんぼ (hide-and-seek) and おにごっこ (tag). Perhaps, the author means リスとび as a cute play on the phrase 蛙とび. These are summarized at the end of the paragraph with the verb: あそぶ. ; these are just games squirrels play. The next paragraph he mentioned squirrels forming balls and dancing. I think it's better not to think about this too deeply; it's just very playful imagery for the life of squirrels.

As mentioned in the comments, what is Calvinball? Is it a form of dodge or baseball or some other kind of "ball" oriented game? It's just a cute name for a game that Calvin and Hobbes engage in with indefinite rules that always seem to change.

Any child who's observed squirrels will know how much squirrels like to jump. I think it's only natural to think of this as some kind of game that squirrels like to engage in, why not then just call it "squirreling around" or リスとび.

Answer 3

You can't tell the nature of リス跳び.

Just as English has phrases such as "bear crawl", "crab walk" and "duck walk", Japanese has phrases like ウサギ跳び ("rabbit hop"), ウマ跳び ("horse leap"), カニ歩き ("crab walk"), エビ反り ("shrimp bend"), タコ殴り ("octopus punch"), タヌキ寝入り ("racoon dog doze") and so on. Generally, it's hard to predict what kind of motion they actually refer to at first sight. Today, I learned that "crab walk" in English and カニ歩き in Japanese refer to completely different things! Still, it's easy to playfully create a new phrase following this pattern, and リス跳び ("squirrel hop") is one such example. Here, リス is not a substitute for anything.

It's fairly challenging to imagine what kind of action リス跳び could be specifically. It may or may not be similar to ウサギ跳び, ウマ跳び or any other existing X跳び words. It's impossible for me to accurately predict the nature of リス跳び from this text alone, and it will remain so even after becoming knowledgeable about squirrels. I even feel the author (or the translator) might have used this phrase without deciding exactly what it entails. That is, this new phrase may have been chosen deliberately to perplex the readers and stimulate their imagination. All I can say is that it almost certainly doesn't require a rope.