Door in the Hedge

From ensorcelled princesses to a frog that speaks, an enchanting collection of fairy tales from the Newbery Medal-winning author. The last mortal kingdom before the unmeasured sweep of Faerieland begins has at best held an uneasy truce with its unpredictable neighbor. There is nothing to show a boundary, at least on the mortal side of it; and if any ordinary human creature ever saw a faerie or at any rate recognized one it was never mentioned; but the existence of the boundary and of faeries beyond it is never in doubt either. So begins "e;The Stolen Princess,"e; the first story of this collection, about the meeting between the human princess Linadel and the faerie prince Donathor. "e;The Princess and the Frog"e; concerns Rana and her unexpected alliance with a small, green, flipper-footed denizen of a pond in the palace gardens. "e;The Hunting of the Hind"e; tells of a princess who has bewitched her beloved brother, hoping to beg some magic of cure, for her brother is dying, and the last tale is a retelling of the Twelve Dancing Princesses in which an old soldier discovers, with a little help from a lavender-eyed witch, the surprising truth about where the princesses dance their shoes to tatters every night.