I was switching the clothes in my kids' closet to summer from winter this morning and I came across a set of Russian picture puzzle blocks. If memory serves, they were given to my older son in Vladivostok by one of the other families crowding the upper floors of the Hotel Vladivostok in early December of 1999.

Depending on which way you turned the blocks, they made six different pictures. I never knew what they were, but this morning, as I was struggling to break my writer's block on another assignment, I decided to go on an Internet search for information. I typed in some key words about one of the pictures and came up with a classic Russian fairy tale, The Frog Princess.

The bones of the story are that a king with three sons decides its time for them to find suitable brides. This being the pre-Internet dating era, he has each son shoot an arrow and look for a bride where it lands. The youngest son's arrow lands in a frog pond. No, no, don’t say poor kid: The king challenges the prospective brides to a series of tasks from making shirts to baking bread and the frog wins contest after contest.

The final challenge is dancing. The youngest son despairs of his bride-to-be's chances, but the frog sheds her skin, becomes a beautiful princess and, once again, aces the competition. Ah, but there's a catch, and Baba Yaga (remember her?) makes an appearance in many versions of the tale's ending.

Thanks to Sher's Russian Index, which I wrote about the other day, I found an audio version of the story, in Russian, on this Tym-Tam CD. And if you want to buy it in book form, the Web site Russian Crafts has the best directory I've seen yet of Russian fairy tale collections in English; there is something at just about every price point.

One more thing: The Frog Princess is slated to get a fresh re-telling, thanks to The Walt Disney Company. Disney's animated version, tentatively titled The Princess and the Frog, will reportedly be set in New Orleans in the 1920s. It is scheduled for release in 2009.

Image Credit: Iurii Vasnetsov