You have to kiss a few frogs, before you can find a prince.

Who comes up with this stuff?  Why on Earth would ANYONE want to kiss a frog, even as it is meant in this case, if you suspect that he or she might be a “frog,” why would you want to kiss them?

I think that the Grimm brothers were laughing when the wrote this; although from what I’ve read the story originally had the princess break the spell over the prince by throwing the frog against the wall, not kissing him. (Probably not the best version for Disney.)

But seriously, can you imagine what the author thought when writing this?  Let’s say they are sitting outside on a warm day and a frog jumps across their path.  The slimy and gooey looking frog is watching the author and the they think, “What if someone had to kiss that frog to save him?”  (Because we, as authors, love putting our characters in tough situations.)  I guess it could have been worse, they could have written the story where the princess had to kiss a snake or a spider. *ewwwwwww….*

What animal would you kiss?  What animal wouldn’t you kiss?

I remember telling ghost stories at sleepovers when I was a young girl.  Some of the common ones made their rounds, but there were on or two that even now kind of spook me out.  What is about scary stories that we like so much?

I stumbled across Enchanted when I was looking for my “E post” for this challenge and couldn’t get the story out of my head.  It ALWAYS creeps me out when kids are used in the story; especially kid demons, zombies, or ghosts.

I thought this story was wonderfully visual.  I could see this, like a movie, playing on a screen in my mind.  We aren’t exactly given a perfect idea of the time which this was set at the beginning but I imagine the little girl in a blue and white dress, her long brown hair flowing.  I’ll bet that the people that live in her house in the future might see her dart behind the trees of the house, or even laughter carried on the breeze when she is playing with the other children.

Have you ever toured through an old house and felt something or someone walk behind you.  Your hair stands up and you feel this cool brush or air crawl up your back.  You turn around quickly but there is nothing there.  Maybe you are downstairs watching TV late at night, and during a quiet moment between commercials you hear the stairs to the attic creak, like someone was walking on them.  You are confused, because you know you are alone in the house, but those stairs only make that noise when someone walks on them. *insert creepy music*

Personally, I love old houses.  I sometimes will pull over to take a picture if I see one because I’m curious about the people that lived there.  What their story was like.  You know?  Did you have a story that used to scare you when you were a kid?

Fairy tales abound with mysterious creatures, but I think my favorite one is the dragon.  I love how the dragon is portrayed as either a villain, like with Saint George, or as a hero like in Pete’s Dragon.

Not too long ago, Build-A-Bear had Toothless that you could buy and I dragged my daughter over to get one.  Turns out that I wanted one more than she did, but since I didn’t want to share we got two.  True story.  (If you haven’t seen How to Train Your Dragon, you need to.  Probably my favorite story involving good dragons.  I told my dogs that they were slacking in the pet department.)

I have found dragons or the use of their image all throughout history and stories.  Even today, you will find that dragons have their own following in books, my favorite in the Romance genre is by Katie MacAlister.

What about you?  What’s your favorite dragon story?