Star Wars Meets Exodus in VeggieTales' Frog Wars

It’s a beautiful thing when two of my favorite fictional worlds collide. This happens quite a bit with VeggieTales, a Christian video series that has expanded to include books, CDs and toys. In print or on screen, the creative minds behind the Veggies (and fruits) often transport the colorful cast to familiar literary locales. Some of my favorite outings have spoofed Lord of the Rings, Indiana Jones, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Wizard of Oz.

While the most complete Veggie experience comes through the videos, there are some very cute books out there incorporating the Veggie gang. One series of picture books uses popular movies to impart important lessons. So far there are eight, including spoofs on West Side Story, Field of Dreams, Lost in Space, The Sword in the Stone, Ben Hur, Cool Hand Luke, The Blues Brothers and Star Wars.

It’s the Star Wars one that I have; I was feeling in need of an extra shot of perseverance, and this uber-geek couldn’t resist the cover. It wasn’t until I got home that I realized I’d received this very book as a free gift back when I was involved in the VeggieMoms home party program, but I don’t mind; the books are inexpensive, and I’m sure I can find somebody who would appreciate the story as much as I do.

Entitled Frog Wars, this book by Cindy Kenney and Doug Peterson is one of two Veggie adaptations of the Biblical account of Moses leading the Israelites out of Egypt. The other is the video Moe and the Big Exit, which sets the story in the American West, giving it the feel of an old John Wayne movie. It’s quite lush and elaborate-looking, while the illustration style in Frog Wars is flatter and more stylized.

Junior Asparagus is the main character, and he is simply himself, a rambunctious boy who wants to play a musical instrument but quickly grows discouraged because he isn’t progressing quickly enough. The main story is framed by his struggles to play the tuba and to determine whether he should stick with it or try yet another new instrument. His mother, advising him to get a more basic instruction book, sends him off to the Treasure Trove bookstore, where, in a scene reminiscent of The Never-Ending Story, he falls into the tome kindly Mr. O’Malley selects for him, and that’s where he spends most of the book.

Kenney and Peterson clearly had a lot of fun matching up Veggie characters to those in the Star Wars universe. Affable Larry the Cucumber becomes Cuke Sandwalker, who quickly welcomes Junior and apprises him of the situation. Cuke is a slave, as is Madame Blueberry’s Princess Hair-Spraya and their adorable Pea buddies, Achoo Bless-U and Sweet-Pea-3-Oh. Ultimately, they are mostly there for decoration, and for the sake of a couple of groan-worthy puns that infiltrate the story. The major player here is Mo.

Mo is Bob the Tomato, and he’s meant to resemble both Obi-Wan Kenobi and Moses. He has a brown hooded robe and a bushy white beard and a light saber / walking stick. He’s the one who must confront Mr. Nezzer’s Dark Visor, the nefarious zucchini who is counting on the frog god Ribbit to help him continue to oppress the many citizens under his rule. As Mo faces Dark Visor again and again, Junior begins to understand what his mother meant when she told him about perseverance.

The contours of the plot are very basic, and generally they have more in common with the book of Exodus than with George Lucas’s epic. None of the other characters are alluded to, except that the elderly Mr. O’Malley serves as a wise advisor and, at the end of the book, winkingly delivers a Yoda-ish line. Those who are already familiar with Star Wars will probably smile, while those who aren’t will probably wonder why the previously perfectly articulate potato is suddenly spouting such garbled syntax. But that’s always the danger of inside jokes like that.

Frog Wars is written with the 4- to 8-year-old set in mind. While the story is more fun for those will understand why all of these characters are wearing such funny costumes and will cotton on to the wordplay involving some of the trilogy’s catchphrases, it’s presented in a manner that is entertaining for those who, like Junior, find this landscape entirely foreign. So step into a galaxy far, far away as the Veggies demonstrate the importance of perseverance.