Story Cue Card – Amanda Jones
Story: The Frog Prince, Continued. By Jon Scieszka.
Ethnic Origin:
Running Time: Approximately 8 minutes
Power Centers: This story is at its heart a funny story, so the main
power center is humor. There are
many funny moments in the story, the funniest of which are listed below. There are also several other power
centers, which are listed below as well.
Secondary Power Centers:
Characters:
1) Princess (who later
becomes a Frog)
2) Prince (who later becomes
a Carriage and then becomes a Frog)
3) Witch #1
4) Witch #2
5) Witch #3
6) Fairy Godmother
Scenes:
1) In the Castle
– Bickering, Prince rereads story, Princess’s fit, Prince leaves
2) Witch #1 –
Witch in “Sleeping Beauty,” wants to cast spell, Prince leaves
3) Witch #2 –
Witch in “Snow White,” offers Prince apple,
Prince leaves
4) Witch #3 –
Witch in “Hansel and Gretel,” Prince invited for lunch, Prince leaves
5) Fairy Godmother
– Fairy Godmother in “Cinderella,” turns Prince into carriage
6) Prince Alone in
7) Prince Back at Home
– Carriage turns back into Prince, runs home to Princess
8) Prince and Princess
Are Frogs – Prince kisses Princess, both become frogs
Synopsis:
After
the Princess has kissed the frog and turned him into a Prince (in the original
“Frog Prince” story), the Prince and Princess are not having a
pleasant life together. The
Princess is frustrated with the Prince for sticking out his tongue and hopping
on the furniture, and the Prince wishes the Princess would go down with him to
the pond. The Prince wishes he
could leave, but his story says that he is supposed to live “happily ever
after.”
One
day the Princess throws a fit and tells the Prince that she wishes that he were
still a frog. The Prince thinks
that is a great idea, so he heads into the forest to look for a witch to turn
him back into a frog. The first
Witch he meets is convinced that he wants to try to wake up Sleeping Beauty
before the 100 years are up, so she threatens to cast a nasty spell on him, and
he runs away. The second Witch is
afraid that he wants to rescue Snow White, so she tries to feed him a poisoned
apple, and he runs away. The third
Witch is having Hansel and Gretel over for dinner, so the Prince believes that
she wants to eat him too, and he runs away.
The
Prince then comes to a Fairy Godmother, who is on her way to help Cinderella
get to the ball. She tries to turn
the Prince back into a frog, but she accidentally turns him into a
carriage. The Prince gets scared
because he is all alone in the dark forest. He wishes he were at home with the
Princess and doesn’t think he’ll ever make it back. But all of a sudden, the clock in the
village strikes
Rhymes/Special Phrases/"Flavor":
1) Wording of the beginning:
“The Princess kissed the frog.
He turned into a prince. And
they lived happily ever after.”
2) Repetition of the
Prince’s phrase “Miss Witch, Miss
Witch. Excuse me, Miss Witch. I wonder if you could help me?”
with each of the three witches
3) Repetition of the phrase
“Well, no matter. If
you’re a prince, you’re a prince” by each of the first two
witches
4) Wording of the ending: “The Prince
kissed the Princess. They both
turned into frogs. And they hopped
off happily ever after. The End.”
Audience: 12 to 14-year-olds
This story is appropriate
for YA’s because it contains the following elements:
1) Complex Tale: This
story is fairly complex, with various characters and several changes of
location. It deals with multiple
perspectives at the same time (the Prince’s perspective and the
Princess’s perspective), considering how both feel about the problems
they are having. Also, the Prince
and Princess are multidimensional characters in that they possess both positive
and negative qualities, rather than being either good or evil. This type of story appeals to adolescents because,
according to Piaget, they have entered the “formal operational”
stage and can now consider issues from several different viewpoints at the same
time. Thus they prefer more complex
stories that challenge them, rather than simple, direct plots with good guys
and bad guys. According to Greene,
YA’s prefer “characters who are not necessarily all good or all
evil” because these types of characters challenge them intellectually.
2) Real Relationships:
Rather than living “happily ever after” like the couples of
traditional fairy tales, this story’s Prince and Princess have the types
of problems and struggles in their new life together that we all experience in
our relationships with others.
According to adolescent psychologists, such as Havighurst, and
organizations, such as the Carnegie Council on Adolescent Development,
adolescents are very focused on forming mature relationships with others,
especially with peers. Thus
YA’s would be able to relate to the struggles that the Prince and
Princess have in overcoming their differences as they attempt to build a strong
relationship. They would be able to
identify with the real, everyday problems that the Prince and Princess are
having. They would particularly be
able to relate to the rather immature way that the Princess chooses to express
her feelings (by having a fit) because, according to Konopka, adolescents at
times need to be argumentative and emotional, so they would most likely have
had outbursts of their own.
3) Identity Crisis:
The Prince in this story is having a major identity crisis. Although he is human, he still displays
many frog-like tendencies, and he is therefore unable to act in a socially
acceptable, human way. He would
like to become a frog again, but according to many characters in the story, he
does not look much like a frog either.
Thus he is caught somewhere between being a frog and being a human. According to Erikson,
YA’s are at a similar boundary: the boundary between childhood and
adulthood, and are trying to find their place in society. Other adolescent psychologists, such as
Elliott and Stover, agree that adolescents are very focused on resolving issues
of identity, defining their role, and finding their niche in society. Thus they can relate to the Frog Prince
because they are struggling with the same types of identity issues that he is.
4) Humorous Version of
Well-Known Tale: This tale is a humorous continuation of a well-known fairy
tale, and it also includes elements of various other fairy tales. According to Greene, this type of tale
really appeals to YA’s. They
like the satire and sarcastic humor.
They also enjoy these tales because they are irreverent and make fun of
accepted standards, branching away from what is well-known. Klor categorizes these types of tales as
“exaggerations and spoofs” and says that YA’s
like them because “they are at last familiar enough with the classic folk
and fairy tales and wise enough to see the humor of the spoof.”
Bibliographic information
on other versions/variants:
Versions of the traditional German “Frog Prince” tale, which
Scieszca’s tale continues.
The Frog Prince. Adapted from the retelling by the Brothers Grimm. By Paul
Galdone. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company,
1975.
The Frog Prince. By The
Brothers Grimm, Illustrated by Robert Baxter. Mahwah,
The Frog Prince. Retold by Jan Ormerod and David Lloyd. New York: Lothrop,
Lee and Shepard Books,
1990.
“The
Frog Prince” by The Brothers Grimm in The
Faber Book of Favourite Fairy
Tales. Edited by Sara and
Stephen Corrin. Boston:
Faber and Faber, 1988. p.
141-147.
“The
Frog Prince” by the Brothers Grimm, translated and retold by Wanda
Gág,
in Tomie dePaola’s
Favorite Nursery Tales. By Tomie dePaola.
New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1986. p. 20-31.
“The
Frog Prince” in A Handful of Beans. Retold by Jeanne
Steig. New York:
HarperCollins, 1998. p. 99 – 118.
“The Frog Prince” in Puss in Boots and Other Stories. Told and Illustrated by
Anne Rockwell.
New York: MacMillan Publishing Company, 1988. p. 66 – 74.
“The
Frog Prince” in Read Me a Fairy Tale: A
Child’s Book of Classic Fairy Tales.
Retold by Rose Impey. New York: Scholastic, 1992. p. 9 – 14.
“The
Frog King, or Iron Heinrich” in The
Complete Fairy Tales of the Brothers
Grimm. Translation and Introduction by Jack Zipes. New York: Bantam Books, 2003. p. 2 – 5. (Other books on the complete or selected
tales of the Brothers Grimm also include this tale.)
The Frog Prince or Iron Henry. By Jacob and Wilhelm
Grimm. Illustrated by
Binette Schroeder. Translated by Naomi
Lewis. New York: North-South
Books, 1989.
The Princess and the Frog. By the Grimm Brothers, Retold by Will
Eisner. New
The Princess and the Frog. By Rachel Isadora. New York: Greenwillow Books,
1989.
English
variant of the “Frog Prince” tale, in which the main character is a
poor widow’s daughter instead of a princess:
“The Paddo” in Alan Garner’s Book of British Fairy
Tales. By Alan
Garner. New
Brief
comparison of all versions/variants in terms of language, rhythm, "tellability," "flavor," content, etc. Stress the differences in style rather than
those of content:
Original Brothers Grimm
Tale:
The
original tale, by the Brothers Grimm, is the most beautifully written version
of the tale. It uses very advanced,
poetic language, which is full of metaphors. For example, one sentence says,
“The sun itself, which sees so much, was dazzled when its light shone on
her face.” The story achieves
its rhythm by being peppered with small rhyming verses, such as “There
was a princess/ Open the door!/ She made me a promise,/ I’ll tell you
more!” Because of the
beautiful language and rhyming verses, this version of the story is thus very “tellable.”
This
version of the tale is also more violent than the version that many children
today have heard. In this version,
the Princess turns the frog into a Prince when she throws him against the wall
in anger. The introduction of
violence as the method of transformation makes this tale much less innocent
than other versions.
Rewritten Versions of
Brothers Grimm Tale:
Many
of the versions of the tale that I have listed above are only
slightly-rewritten versions of the Brothers Grimm version. For example, Rockwell, Baxter, and
Galdone’s versions of the tale are very similar to the original. However, other authors have made
significant changes to the Grimm Brothers’ tale. For example, several authors changed the
tale so that the transformation from frog to prince occurs without
violence. For example, Corrin, dePaola,
and Isadora have made the transformation occur either silently during the
night, or when the Prince touches the floor in the morning. This change makes the tale a much more
innocent one because the Princess does not show violent rage toward the frog. Impey goes a step further: In her
version, the transformation occurs when the Princess kisses the frog. This changes the tale quite a bit
because it makes it into a rather romantic tale.
There
are also many stylistic differences in these versions of the tale. For example, some authors of the tale
have shortened or eliminated the rhyming verses in the tale. DePaola has shortened the verses, and
Isadora has completely eliminated them.
Her version of the tale is therefore much less “tellable”
because it is much more direct and matter-of-fact, with much less beautiful,
poetic language. Some authors have
taken the opposite approach and have actually expanded the rhyming verses. For example, Impey has introduced
four-line rhyming verses throughout the story, and Steig has added longer
rhyming verses, so that almost half of the story is now told in rhyme. These changes actually make the story
more appealing to listen to, and, thus, more “tellable.”
Eisner’s
version of the tale is the most different from the original because he has put
the story in graphic novel format.
He has also changed the focus of the tale so that it is now completely
on the Frog Prince. The story
begins when the Prince is being turned into a frog and follows the frog all the
way through the story until he becomes a prince again. This version of the story is designed to
be read rather than told, because it depends mostly on the cartoon format to
capture the audience’s interests.
British Variant:
The
British variant of the tale, in which the main character in the story is a poor
widow’s daughter rather than a Princess, is different from the German
versions in that it achieves its style and rhythm not through poetic language
or through rhyme but through four-line non-rhyming songs that the frog sings
throughout the story. The language
in these rhymes is not beautiful, but instead reflects the culture and time
period in which the story takes place.
For example, words such as “hinny” and “paddo”
are used. Thus the story is still
very “tellable,” but has a less lofty, more everyday feel than the
German tale.
Also,
this variant is less innocent and more violent than the German versions because
the Princess turns the frog into a Prince by cutting off his head.