Further Jolly Bedtime Tales for Big & Little People
by
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Princess Nina’s Final Fiasco
IT WAS SPRINGTIME when Grandpa Hartley returned to earth; and before he had made his way out of the forest where Andy had been forever transformed into a beech tree, he was reminded by the din issuing from the vernal ponds he passed of another grandchild who lived there. The noise was being made by the local frog population, whose loudest but most inconspicuous members were the tiny spring peepers. True to their name, they did indeed peep, but their shrill, high-pitched voices, rising and falling on the chill late-day wind, could be heard nearly a mile away. Almost as loud were the handsome wood frogs, whose call was a kind of sharp, explosive clack similar to that made by pebbles knocking against each other when Poseidon, the brother of Zeus and Lord of the Oceans, sends his waves crashing onto seashores to toss them about.
The latter species, Grandpa recalled, was the one into which his granddaughter Nina had been changed upon kissing the frog prince of her dreams; so he now set off in the direction of their raucous calls. Upon reaching the wood frogs’ pond, he was amazed to see the Prince sitting alone on a log—not at all croaking rapturously, as were his subjects who were so shamelessly frolicking in the water around him, but instead weeping uncontrollably and uttering the most bitter imprecations.
“Whatever is the matter?” Grandpa cried out to the Prince. “And where is my darling granddaughter Nina? Is she in the royal nursery, or is she, perhaps, busy laying eggs in the pond?”
“Laying eggs indeed,” exclaimed the Prince, “but not in my pond! As you yourself know very well—and might have had the courtesy to inform me before I married her—Princess Nina is in the habit of kissing every frog that comes her way; and one day when I returned home from work, I found her entertaining a great roisterer of a bullfrog. It was his big, booming jug-o-rum voice that she found so irresistible—or so she claimed—and that very night she went hopping off with him, leaving me and the children to fen for ourselves.”
“I suppose you mean fend,” Grandpa Hartley added helpfully, “although I can hardly believe it possible that one of my descendants would behave so irresponsibly.” After promising the Prince that he would do his best to reawaken some sense of decency in Nina’s amphibian brain, Grandpa set out for the pond of the bullfrogs. There he found Nina gaily swimming about, surrounded by and kissing some dozen oversize companions, although which of them had alienated her affections from the Prince he had no way of knowing.
“Omigod!” exclaimed Nina upon seeing her grandfather, without realizing the appropriateness of her remark. “What are you doing here?”
“Simply my duty as a caring grandfather,” Grandpa Hartley modestly replied, “in the hope that I might recall someone to her senses. For the Prince and all your children are in need of you, Nina, and it seems to me that your genteel upbringing and inherent sense of honor—before you turned frog, that is—ought to persuade you to return to them. After all,” he added with a pleasant smile, “there’s more to a loving relationship than a big, booming voice.”
“Big, booming voice my webbed foot!” Nina croaked impetuously. “I suppose it was the Prince who told you that one. For your information, that’s not the only thing that’s big about bullfrogs; so I’ll thank you to mind your own business, if it’s at all possible for you to do so, caring Grandpa Hartley!”
This last phrase was uttered in a tone of voice that Grandpa knew all to
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About the Book
HE’S BACK! Kind old Grandpa Hartley has returned to earth to check on the family members last seen in his Jolly Bedtime Tales for Big & Little People. Readers of that perverse classic are sure to delight in his latest adventures as he (futilely, of course) attempts to improve his descendants’ manners and help them avoid the fates so many of them deserve.
Here, for example, we again meet the hapless Andy, whose head was formerly sewn on backwards by his sometimes inattentive grandfather and who now winds up a permanent part of the landscape; Grandma Hartley—she who ate Rudolph, Santa’s favorite reindeer—whom Grandpa visits in Hell; not to mention Chin-Chin, the yellow edition of Grandpa’s granddaughter Jennifer, who is now running the Dog-Gone Café on the slopes of Mount Everest prior to her wedding to the Abominable Snowman!
And let’s not forget the celebrated “Little Boy Who Blew His Legs Off,” who in his new tale, breezing past his gasping competitors in his jet-propelled wheelchair, competes in the annual race up New Hampshire’s Mount Washington!
Of course, several new characters are also introduced; and in the final tale Aphrodite descends to earth in order to find Grandpa and return with him to Mount Olympus. In this chapter, too, one may admire a beautiful depiction of the lightly clad goddess by the book’s illustrator, Tom Krumwiede, who has additionally created amusing watercolors for all the other tales.
Further Jolly Bedtime Tales for Big & Little People by Grandpa Hartley has already received enthusiastic endorsements and been declared a worthy successor to his earlier Tales. Both works deserve a place of honor in the library of every civilized reader.
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