Timeless Thursday: The Frog Prince

photo by ingermaaike2 www.flickr.com

For this week’s Timeless Thursday post, I decided to write about the fairy tale, The Frog Prince. It’s on my mind since Disney’s latest princess movie is involving a version of The Frog Prince with the title, The Princess and the Frog. Disney’s version looks crazy and funny, set in New Orleans, and my stepson said, “I got to see that.” I think he especially likes the part in the preview where the princess turns into a frog, instead of the other way around. If you haven’t seen anything about Disney’s The Princess and the Frog yet, then you can view a preview here: Disney Pictures.

If you want to make sure your child or your students know this old classic tale before they see the movie this holiday season, then you can read them The Frog Prince version on Childhood Reading.com. But watch out for this early version because there’s no kissing involved to change the frog into the prince. What actually happens is the princess is just absolutely disgusted by the frog, he is annoying her at night, and she throws him against the wall. Then he turns into a prince–so after reading you might want to discuss the proper treatment of frogs and the fantasy genre.

I love Jon Scieszka, author of The True Story of the Three Little Pigs and The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales. He has also written a book based on The Frog Prince that would be fun to share with your kids and family:

Scieszka tells what happens after the princess kisses the frog and how they don’t quite live happily ever after. You know–he misses the pond.

I love the whole fractured fairy tale trend–taking the classics, which some of them were quite brutal as with The Frog Prince, and turning them into fun tales for children. When I was a regular classroom teacher, one of my favorite compare/contrast lessons was taking an old classic like Goldilocks and the Three Bears and comparing it with a newbie like The Silly Story of Goldie Locks and the Three Squares.

Fairy tales are timeless and fun, and reading skills and lessons can be taught in the middle of all that imagination.