Friday, June 7, 2013

Frogged by Vivian Vande Velde

Frogged by Vivian Vande Velde is an entertaining twist on The Frog Prince.

When Princess Imogene is tricked into kissing an annoying village boy-turned-frog, she succeeds in turning him back into a human . . . but rather than breaking the curse, she ends up trapped in frog form herself. She goes to the witch for help, but the witch proves spectacularly unhelpful. Imogene must either remain a frog, or find someone else to kiss and take on the curse in turn. Before she can figure out what to do about the situation, she finds herself captured by a boy-crazy teen runaway and a ragtag acting troupe who plan to use her in their show, and have no intention of returning her to the castle. Even if Imogene can escape, can she find a way to break the curse without condemning someone else to the same fate?

Frogged is a quick, amusing read, with plenty of humor. It doesn't break any new ground -- E.D. Baker already covered the princess-turned-frog ground pretty thoroughly in The Frog Princess -- nor is it particularly deep. However, the writing is clever enough, and the plot enjoyable enough, that young readers are likely to find it quite satisfactory.

(Reviewed from a copy borrowed through my library system.)

1 comment:

  1. It's always a pleasure when I run into reviews of books that I've enjoyed. Everything you said here was right on the dot.

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