Story Cue Card
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.