Product Description

1966-1988 Best of the Best Books for Young Adults (ALA)
1979 Fanfare Honor List (The Horn Book)
1979 Books for the Teen Age (NY Public Library)

2000 List of Popular Paperbacks for YA

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #90197 in Books
• Published on: 1993-05-01
• Released on: 1993-06-30
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

Amazon.com Review
This much-loved retelling of the classic French tale Beauty and the Beast elicits the familiar magical charm, but is more believable and complex than the traditional story. In this version, Beauty is not as beautiful as her older sisters, who are both lovely and kind. Here, in fact, Beauty has no confidence in her appearance but takes pride in her own intelligence, her love of learning and books, and her talent in riding. She is the most competent of the three sisters, which proves essential when they are forced to retire to the country because of their father's financial ruin.

The plot follows that of the renowned legend: Beauty selflessly agrees to inhabit the Beast's castle to spare her father's life. Beauty's gradual acceptance of the Beast and the couple's deepening trust and affection are amplified in novel form. Robin McKinley's writing has the flavor of another century, and Beauty heightens the authenticity as a reliable and competent narrator.

This was McKinley's first book, written almost 20 years ago. Since that time she has been awarded the Newbery Medal for The Hero and the Crown and has delighted her fans with another retelling of the Beauty and the Beast fable, Rose Daughter. Still, McKinley's first novel has a special place in the hearts of her devoted readers, many of whom attest to relishing Beauty time and again. (Ages 11 to Adult)

Review
"A captivating novel." -- -- ALA Booklist

About the Author
Robin McKinley won the 1985 Newbery Medal for her book The Hero and the Crown, and a 1983 Newbery Honor for The Blue Sword, both set in mythical Damar.She is also the author of Beauty, a retelling of Beauty and the Beast.She lives in England.

"I was an only child and my father was in the Navy. We moved every year or two--California, Japan, upstate New York, New England. I early found the world of books much more satisfactory than the unstable so-called real world. I can't remember the first time I read Frances Hodgson Burnett's but this particular story, about a little girl all alone in a strange land who told stories so wonderful that she believed them herself, fasci-nated me. I never quite lived up to Sara Crewe's standard, but I tried awfully hard.

"Writing has always been the other side of reading for me; it never occurred to me not to make up stories. Once I got old enough to realize that authorship existed as a thing one might aspire to, I knew it was for me. I even majored in English literature in college, a good indication of my fine bold disdain for anything so trivial as earning a living; I was going to be a writer, like Dickens and Hardy and George Eliot. And Kipling and H. Rider Haggard and J.R.R. Tolkien. I was, however, going to tell breathtaking stories about girls who had adventures. I was tired of the boys always getting the best parts in the best books. What with reading and making up my own stories, I spent most of my life in my head; about the only irresistible attraction reality had for me was in the shape of horses and riding. And I liked traveling. Perhaps because of my childhood, staying in one place for very long just seemed to me like a waste of opportunity.

"It's funny, though, the things life does to you. Inadvertently I discovered myself settling down, looking for excuses not to climb on another airplane. I bought a house because I fell in love with it, and it was somewhere to leave the thousands of books I picked up everywhere I went. Later, I decided that I wanted something around that didn't necessarily sit politely on a shelf till I took it down, so I bought a dog, a whippet I named Rowan. Insidiously I began liking it that tomorrow was going to be much like yesterday: walking the dog, sitting at the typewriter. I declared myself to have found home in my tiny house in a small village two-thirds of the way up the coast of Maine. I also, a little ruefully, concluded that my individual mix of the writer's traditional absent-mindedness, a rather uncompromising feminism, and a naturally intransigent personality made marriage or any sort of permanent romantic attachment impractical. I didn't actually think I was missing much; I liked being single.

"This no doubt explains--somehow--why I am now living in a small village in a very large house in Hampshire, England, with my husband, the English writer Peter Dickinson, three whippets, and a horse, and what seems to me, the only child and ex-solitary adult, about half a million Dickinson grandchildren rioting underfoot, down the corridors, and across the garden. When Peter and I decided to get married, it was obvious to me I was the one who had to emigrate; I was the military brat with lifelong experience of pulling up and moving on. So I dug up my tender new under-standing of home, packed it very carefully, and broughtit over here with me, with the eighty cartons of books and one bewildered whippet. It has taken root vigorously here, but the message to headquarters is very emphatic: Don't you ever do this to us again. I'm not likely to: I've planted over four hundred rosebushes in what were once Peter's classic English garden borders--and look after them devotedly. I have the scars to prove it. I think I've discovered reality after all. I'm astonished at how interesting it is. It's giving me more things to write stories about."

Customer Reviews

One of the best re-tellings of a classic
This is a fantastic book. I loved the twists to the story, and the characters were very well done. I've never read any other retelling of fairy tales that were able to capture the magic, were for an older generation, and yet were still clean. It was refreshing to see a retelling that was not literary porn. A very good book, I highly recommend it. Very enjoyable.

Enjoyable Read
This is a nice retelling of Beauty and the Beast where the sisters aren't wicked and Beauty isn't quite as much of a martyr. Many of the descriptions remind me of Jean Cocteau's movie. It would be a good read for a young adult interested in fairy tales or an adult looking for a quick and enjoyable read.

An easy nd imaginative read.
The book is very fun and intreging. The details and diction used are captivating. Beauty and the Beast is my favorite story and this version has become one of my favorites.