The Princess And The Frog: Adapted From The Frog King And Iron Heinrich By The Brothers Grimm

The Princess and the Frog: Adapted from the Frog King and Iron Heinrich by the Brothers Grimm

As payment for retrieving the princess's ball, the frog exacts a promise which the princess is reluctant to fulfill From School Library Journal Kindergarten-Grade 3-- Isadora changes the story of this well-known Grimm tale slightly--originally, the transformation from frog to prince takes place when the princess, exasperated with the frog's demands, splatters him against the wall in frustration; here the transformation takes place after the princess endures three nights' sleep with the frog sharing her pillow, a more fitting reward of a prince for a princess who has learned a lesson in patience. The best part of the illustration is the treatment of the frog, who remains slimy, bug-eyed, and amphibious, yet central in the illustration: this is a problem that both Rackham and Caldecott failed to master in their illustrations of the same story. But the princess and the other humans fare less well. The princess is a turn-of-the-century young lady, while her father and suitor remain hopelessly medieval in crowns, capes, and doublets. This anachronism, coupled with the problem inherent in the story that the little girl at the beginning must grow to marriageable age by the end of an improbably short story, makes the whole concept of setting the story in an actual moment of time less than successful. The impressionistic vagueness of the characters' outlines is also disconcerting, especially when compared to the hardness of the frog's well-defined edges. --Ruth K. MacDonald, Purdue University Calumet, Hammond, Ind.Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.