The Frog Princess

The Frog Princess is a novel for young readers by the American writer E. D. Baker, published in 2002. It was her first book, and it takes a familiar fairy tale and turns it the other way round.

Princess Emeralda, who is known as Emma, does not fit the part she has been given. She laughs like a donkey rather than in tinkling bells, she is clumsy, and she has no wish at all to marry Prince Jorge, who is the man her mother has in mind for her.

When she is talked into kissing a frog so that he can be a prince again, the spell does not do what anybody expected, and Emma is the one who turns into a frog. From that point the two of them are on a quest to get back into human form.

The characters they meet along the way include a self-conscious but friendly bat, a snake that turns out to be surprisingly loyal and a wise green witch, and the book was the first of a series about the same princess.