The Frog and the Princess: And the Prince and the Mole, and the Frog and the Mole, and the Prince and the Princess...

A fractured format divides and defeats this fractured fairy tale: half of the book tells of a princess who kisses a frog but is herself turned into a mole; at midpoint, the book can be flipped upside-down for the tale of a prince who kisses a mole and is transformed into a frog. A second kiss restores the characters to their original shapes, in effect creating a story that repeats four times. With no significant visual or textual variation in the different parts of the story, the repetition becomes not, as promised, ``a new start to the book,'' but merely tiresome, especially for children old enough to appreciate the irony in a spoof. The couplets strain (e.g., ``was'' is made to rhyme with ``because''). Flat paintings lend an odd stillness, and fail to take advantage of the opportunities in the unusual format; Powell's overtly satirical style seems too adult for the text. The many parts add up to only an extended anecdote, not a full-fledged story. Ages 6-up. (Nov.)