n Christmas morning, Angelina and her little brother George, who had looked a lot like a frog the day he came home from the hospital after he was born, got up expecting a lot of presents under the tree, just like every year.
Instead, they found only one great, big pomegranate on the coffee table, with a note from Santa Claus that said, "One of the seeds in the pomegranate is magic. Surprises await! Have fun! Santa Claus."

"What shall we do?" asked George curiously.
"Let's eat all the pommegranet seeds and see who gets the magic seeds," suggested Angelina. "Hmmm, these are delicious," she said after putting the first one into her mouth.

They ate the seeds in turns, one by one, and after exactly two hundred and thirty-six seeds had been chewed and swallowed, George suddenly began to transform into a real, live frog. With a few flicks of his froggy tongue, he polished off the rest of the seeds.

"Oh, George," Angelina said excitedly. "You became my favorite amphibian. Now, I don't need a frog for Christmas."

"Yeah, but what about me?" George said anxiously.

"Don't worry. I'll get a good, wet terrerium and feed you regularly."

This didn't seem to satisfy George, so he hopped onto the coffee table, and began to nibble on the candy cane cookies that Santa hadn't eaten on Christmas Eve. Suddenly, he found himself in the middle of a tall candy cane forest with Angelina beside him.

"How did you do that?" Angelina asked, between licks of the sugar on the "bark" of the "trees".

"I don't know," said George, "but follow me."

George hopped and hopped and hopped, and Angelina skipped behind him for a long time. Finally, they discovered an enormous, decorated Christmas tree with a beautiful, silver and gold angel on top. Under the tree, there were all the presents they had dreamed of. Angelina rapidly began to attack the presents, but before she could open the first one, George's froggy eye spotted a tiny ornament different from all the others. It was a tiny white sphere shimmering in the light. With his froggy tongue, he grabbed it from the branch and put in Angelina's pocket.

Without warning, they found themselves standing on the drawbridge in front of an ice-pop castle.The drawbridge was built out of candy cane logs. The children crossed it, and when it slammed shut behind them, white sugar sprinkled down like sawdust. They looked around and saw ... Everything and everybody was frozen! There was a man cutting logs with his ax high in the air. There were people playing volley ball with an enormous blue jawbreaker for a ball. It was suspended in mid-air over the net. There were two swordsmen practicing, their swords crossed and unmoving. At the foot of a winding staircase on the children's right, there was a guard with his eyes closed.

"He must have been blinking when he froze," suggested Angelina.

"Good thing for us," said George, who hopped past him and up the stairs. Angelina followed,licking the licorice banister on her way up.

When they got to the top, they came to a thick ice door with peppermint pillars on each side. The lock was made of rock candy.

"I guess I'll have to lick it away, if we want to get in," said Angelina, and she began to lick and lap.

After a rather long time to wait, especially for a frog, George said, "Let me have a try," and he flicked out his tongue and stuck it onto the lock. Then he hopped backward and -POP- out came the lock and the door opened.

There in the middle of the room lay a princess on an ice cream sandwich bed.
"She's beautiful!" exclaimed George.

"What are you talking about?" asked Angelina dumbfounded. "She's a frog!"

"I'm going to kiss her," announced George.

"Do whatever you please," said Angelina. "I'm going to lick up this ice cream. It would be a pity to let it go to waste."

George kissed the frog princess gently, then hopped back to see her reaction. Nothing happened. Angelina looked up and said, "Guess you're not a prince," and then went back to eating the princess'"mattress".

George looked more closely at his princess, and noticed something he hadn't seen before. She was wearing a pearl necklace, and one of the pearls was missing. "Look at this," he said.

Angelina stopped licking and looked. "Hey, those pearls look exactly like the sphere in my pocket." She took it out and put it on the end of George's sticky tongue. With another flick of his tongue, he stuck the pearl in place. The necklace immediately grew leaves and became a circle of mistletoe. So George kissed the froggy princess again, and this time she woke up. But instead of being in the ice castle, she was on the coffee table of their living room, sitting in a pile of mistletoe, with the children standing beside her. George had changed back into a boy.

At that moment, Mommy and Daddy came out of the bedroom, rubbing their eyes.

Angelina said, "Look what Santa brought us - a frog, and we think it's magic."

Dad picked it up and said, "It looks like an ordinary frog to me."

Mom picked up the mistletoe. "What unusual mistletoe berries these are!" she observed. "See how they shine?" Then she held it over her head for Dad to kiss her, and when he did, they both disappeared.

"Have fun!" said Angelina.

"Surprises await you," said George.

"Ribbit!" croaked their Merry Christmas frog on the coffee table.