Top 3 Frog Prince Stories (Lizzie)

Tales of Ever After, the anthology with my retelling of the "Frog Prince," released recently, which naturally means frog prince retellings have been on my mind. And what better subject for a Top 3 post?

Top 3 Frog Prince Retellings

1) E.D. Baker's The Frog Princess

This is a charming children's novel about a princess who kisses a frog and then becomes a one herself. Princess Emerelda is not any better at being a demure princess than she is at mastering magic, and she certainly does not want to marry Prince Jorge, though her mother insists she will. That all changes when she becomes a frog, but despite the flaws of her human life, Emerelda doesn't want to stay a frog. So she and her frog prince go on an adventure to find a witch who can tell them how to become human again.

If the idea of a princess turning into a frog when she kisses a frog prince sounds familiar, isn't because this story inspired a Disney animation.

2) Disney’s The Princess and the Frog

I love the 1920s New Orleans setting of this story, the music, the hardworking waitress Tiana, and ... well, there's a lot to enjoy about this movie. A practical, hardworking young woman with big dreams of opening her own restaurant and a spoiled, selfish princess, both turned into frogs, must venture into the bayou to find a way to return to their true form. Vodoo and evil spirits are a part of the movie, as they are responsible the prince's curse, so that is something to consider. It does add an interesting cultural element to the story, however.

3) Melanie Dickerson's The Princess Spy 

Another great medieval fairytale retelling from Melanie Dickerson. This story concerns Margaretha, daughter of the Duke of Hagenheim. I first met Margaretha in The Captive Maiden and was thrilled to discover she was getting a story of her own. The Princess Spy is an enjoyable story of a wealthy young woman who becomes nurse to a mysterious injured man because she's the only one who can speak his language. She doesn't it like it when he claims her handsome suitor is the man who caused his wounds. Margaretha is forced to spy to find out the truth and discovers a plot much greater than she thought.

Do you have a favorite Frog Prince retelling?

How to Hide a Prince and the Tales of Ever After Anthology (Lizzie)

Today's the big day! Tales of Ever After, a Fellowship of Fantasy anthology, has been released! It's available as an ebook and a print book on amazon and is available at several other stores through Books2Read. My contribution, the short story "How to Hide a Prince," is a Frog Prince retelling with a bit of a twist. It's a fun story and I'm excited to be able to share it with you. Here's a bit more about it and the anthology. Be sure to enter the blog tour giveaway through the links at the bottom of the post.

If you'd like to learn more about Tales of Ever After's authors, click the image above to go the blog tour schedule.

About my Story: How to Hide a Prince

She spends her days tossing a golden ball. Seriously? That was my reaction when I started reading the Grimm brothers' story “The Frog King.” It didn’t get better from there. There’s the mindless princess who soon becomes the selfish princess who doesn’t want to fulfill her end of the bargain with the talking frog who retrieves her golden ball from the water. Then there’s her father, the king, who hears a loud banging on the castle door and sees his daughter’s heart beating frantically and asks if there’s a giant come for her. And that fabled kiss? Not in the story. The frog is tossed against a wall. 

So the Grimm story wasn’t what I was expecting, but perhaps that’s part of the fun of fairy tales. They spark the imagination and invite us to contribute our own creations. We pull out the intriguing ideas--a prince cursed to be a frog and who must gain something from a princess, a world where a giant (or something else--like a dragon) might be at the door--and answer the challenge to create our own fairy tale. Like E.D. Baker did with her adorable story of a princess who kisses a frog and then becomes a one herself. Baker's The Frog Princess inspired Disney’s The Princess and the Frog.

So there’s the classic frog prince story where a princess meets a frog in a garden, kisses him, and the frog becomes a prince; and the Baker/Disney version where the girl kisses the frog who claims to be a prince and is turned into a frog. The frog prince story revolves around the kiss and a curse. But when considering how to make my own version, I had to ask, what if the girl is prevented from kissing the frog? What if a man appears claiming she’ll be cursed if she kisses the frog? That the frog isn’t the kind of prince she thinks he is. What if the man and a sorcerer are both after this frog? If you were a princess, who would you believe--a frog with the power to speak or a man who’d sneaked into your castle and drew a sorcerer there? That’s Princess Fiona’s dilemma in “How to Hide a Prince.” If she makes the wrong choice, more than just she and the frog will suffer. It's a bit different from a girl mindless tossing a golden ball all day, when she's not tossing frogs against walls. Hopefully, you'll enjoy this rendition and its twists and surprise ending.

Princess Fiona enjoys being a healer, but she doesn’t expect those gifts to have anything to do with the prophecy declaring she’ll save a prince. Or either to have anything to do with a frog who claims to be said prince. But now she finds herself shut away in her own castle, hiding from a sorcerer and looking after both a frog and a wounded young man who insists she’ll be cursed if she kisses the frog. Who’s she to believe?

Enjoy "How to Hide a Prince" and fifteen other fairy tales in Tales of Ever After.

Rescue a princess, meet a mermaid, win your reward. 

The authors of the Fellowship of Fantasy tackle fairy tales from once upon a time to happily ever after. Explore twists on old tales and brand new magical stories. Meet feisty mermaids, friendly lampposts, and heroes who just might be monsters themselves. 

This fourth anthology from the Fellowship of Fantasy will lead you on a quest for entertainment and storm the castle of your imagination. So make a wish and enter the deep dark woods to find stories that will make you laugh, shiver, and maybe even fall in love. 

Don’t forget to enter these great giveaways:

US ONLY
(All books are paperbacks, and possibly signed.)
a Rafflecopter giveaway

INTERNATIONAL (All books are ebooks of the winner’s file format of choice) a Rafflecopter giveaway

Also, be sure to comment on all the blog posts in the blog tour this week. The person who comments the most times will win a small collection of sneak peeks from some of the authors upcoming works.

To get you started, here are two questions you can answer for me. What's your favorite fairy tale and do you have a favorite Frog Prince retelling?