THE PRINCE OF THE POND

Poor Jade (or Jade-to-be, since "de fawg pin" has yet to name her): she's faced with a big, beautiful frog—such legs!—and he doesn't seem to have the foggiest notion about what to do with his tongue, or how to leap or avoid danger. She even has to teach him to mate, and then he insists on personally raising at least 50 of his hundreds of children. Still, though he never masters r's, l's and s's (hence "Pin" for "Prince"), he leaves his aristocratic mark on the pond world, as a hag-bewitched prince should. He also leaves Jade with the 50 tads when a passing princess accidentally plants a kiss on his proboscis. Just when you thought it was safe to go back to the pond, another change is rung on the frog prince; this time, readers' sympathies will be with the frog's first wife, left with 50 upwardly mobile children. Nicely complemented by Schachner's charmingly whimsical (and anatomically informed) drawings, a book with an astonishing amount of in-depth natural history cleverly enmeshed in its endearing, screwball charm. (Fiction. 8-12)