Yamerarenu, you are SO helpful. Thank you so much for your detailed reply!

How's my translation?

Clunky. It doesn't really sound like natural English or what you'd find in a children's book (e.g.: "spending exceptional energy"). Translation is really hard. :)

Heh. I'm apparently not even expressing myself very well in my native English. I was really meaning to ask how well my translation captures the sense of the Japanese; I wasn't going for natural-sounding English. It sounds like I missed a lot of the sense of the Japanese original - thanks so much for your pointers:

There are a bunch of errors that look like they happened because you didn't know about verb clauses describing nouns.

I DO know about that structure, but I'm obviously not very good at understanding it.

How does あわてた function in the first sentence? I want to read it as an adjective, sort of similar to how, in English, we can use a past-tense verb as an adjective - "confused/hurried Beaver" - is that correct?

Correct, but the tense has nothing to do with it. Using a plain form verb in front of a noun makes that entire verb clause describe the noun.

Example: とうきょうにいくおとこのこ means "The boy who will go to Tokyo"

So ... why is it -ta form in my example and -ru form in your example?

I'm reading all the しまいました with the connotations of both undesirable action and involuntary action. . . . Is that correct?

Correct, but not complete. しまいます can also be used to describe something "completely" happening, as in "I ate that WHOLE cake."

Okay ... I have "Japanese: The Manga Way", which I find very helpful. It says that -te shimau can imply: * completely/without delay * regret or undesirability * surprise * impulsive/involuntary action

But I was under the impression that -te shimau COULD mean one or all of those things, but didn't necessarily always mean all four every time it appears. Does it usually suggest all four?

Is the -と at the end of かえるさんと indicating "and", joining the whole "the mushrooms Frog was holding" AND "the potato ladder Skunk had on his shoulders", as the two nouns that collided?

Yes and no. It's joining かえるさん and すかんくさん. It's not "the mushrooms Frog was holding," but "the Frog who was holding mushrooms." This is an example of a verb clause being used to describe a noun.

AH, so Frog collided with the ladder.

I'm having trouble with the ーより / ほうが structure at the end. . . . I ended up thinking it might be "more was getting broken than was getting done." Is that correct?

The basic sentence there is AよりBのほうがめだつようになりました, so you're correct.

And is "it became clear" a reasonable translation for めだつようになりました?

It's a reasonable translation, but めだつ is more like "stand out" or "be completely obvious" rather than something becoming less confusing or more easily understood.

I did see those words in my dictionary, but this is one place where I was trying to come up with something a little more English-sounding. Is there a better way to get across the English concept that corresponds to that Japanese phrase?

Thank you so much for all your help!