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a good story but one that has been told so many times that it was to predictable.
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Folktales #1
Beauty
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From Newbery Medal–winning author Robin McKinley, this beloved story illuminates an unlikely love story—Beauty and the Beast. Beauty has never liked her nickname. She is thin and awkward; it is her two sisters who are the beautiful ones. But what she lacks in appearance, she can perhaps make up for in courage. When her father comes home with a tale of an enchanted castle in the forest and the terrible promise he had to make to the Beast who lives there, Beauty knows she must travel to the castle, a prisoner of her own free will. Her father insists that he will not let her go, but she responds, “Cannot a Beast be tamed?” Newbery Medalist Robin McKinley’s beloved and acclaimed novel has been delighting readers for more than forty years. ALA Booklist called Beauty “A captivating novel.” “A reader feels as though it’s all unfolding for the very first time.”— The Guardian An ALA Notable Book for Children A Best Book for Young Adults
325 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published October 25,1978
This edition
- Format
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325 pages, Mass Market Paperback
- Published
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July 26, 2005 by HarperCollins
- ISBN
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9780060753108
- ASIN
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0060753102
- Language
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English
Characters More characters
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Beauty / Honour Huston (robin Mckinley)
The youngest of the three sisters and is the heroine and narrator of the story. Her real name is Honour, in accordance to the literal preference of their mother in naming her children. She got the nickname Beauty when she made the ...
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Grace Huston
She is the eldest of the three sisters and is seven years older than Beauty. She grew into a beautiful and profoundly graceful woman with butter-yellow hair and blue eyes. She has many doting swains, but chose to keep her engagement to a man who sailed ou...
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Molly Honeybourne
Melindas eldest child who helped her clean the Blue Hill house for Beauty and her family. more...
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Hope Huston-woodhouse
She is the second eldest sister of Beauty, five years older with chestnut-brown hair and smoky green eyes. She married her fathers ironworker who helped them pick their losses and start a new life in a town closer to his own home. She eventually gav...
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Lydia (robin Mckinley)
One of Beautys invisible handmaids in the enchanted castle. more...
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Bessie (beauty)
One of Beautys invisible handmaids in the enchanted castle.more...
About the author
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Born in her mother's hometown of Warren, Ohio, Robin McKinley grew up an only child with a father in the United States Navy. She moved around frequently as a child and read copiously; she credits this background with the inspiration for her stories.
Her passion for reading was one of the most constant things in her childhood, so she began to remember events, places, and time periods by what books she read where. For example, she read Andrew Lang's Blue Fairy Book for the first time in California; The Chronicles of Narnia for the first time in New York; The Lord of the Rings for the first time in Japan; The Once and Future King for the first time in Maine. She still uses books to keep track of her life.
McKinley attended Gould Academy, a preparatory school in Bethel, Maine, and Dickinson College in 1970-1972. In 1975, she was graduated summa cum laude from Bowdoin College. In 1978, her first novel, Beauty, was accepted by the first publisher she sent it to, and she began her writing career, at age 26. At the time she was living in Brunswick, Maine. Since then she has lived in Boston, on a horse farm in Eastern Massachusetts, in New York City, in Blue Hill, Maine, and now in Hampshire, England, with her husband Peter Dickinson (also a writer, and with whom she co-wrote Water: Tales of Elemental Spirits in 2001) and two lurchers (crossbred sighthounds).
Over the years she has worked as an editor and transcriber (1972-73), research assistant (1976-77), bookstore clerk (1978), teacher and counselor (1978-79), editorial assistant (1979-81), barn manager (1981-82), free-lance editor (1982-85), and full-time writer. Other than writing and reading books, she divides her time mainly between walking her "hellhounds," gardening, cooking, playing the piano, homeopathy, change ringing, and keeping her blog.
Her passion for reading was one of the most constant things in her childhood, so she began to remember events, places, and time periods by what books she read where. For example, she read Andrew Lang's Blue Fairy Book for the first time in California; The Chronicles of Narnia for the first time in New York; The Lord of the Rings for the first time in Japan; The Once and Future King for the first time in Maine. She still uses books to keep track of her life.
McKinley attended Gould Academy, a preparatory school in Bethel, Maine, and Dickinson College in 1970-1972. In 1975, she was graduated summa cum laude from Bowdoin College. In 1978, her first novel, Beauty, was accepted by the first publisher she sent it to, and she began her writing career, at age 26. At the time she was living in Brunswick, Maine. Since then she has lived in Boston, on a horse farm in Eastern Massachusetts, in New York City, in Blue Hill, Maine, and now in Hampshire, England, with her husband Peter Dickinson (also a writer, and with whom she co-wrote Water: Tales of Elemental Spirits in 2001) and two lurchers (crossbred sighthounds).
Over the years she has worked as an editor and transcriber (1972-73), research assistant (1976-77), bookstore clerk (1978), teacher and counselor (1978-79), editorial assistant (1979-81), barn manager (1981-82), free-lance editor (1982-85), and full-time writer. Other than writing and reading books, she divides her time mainly between walking her "hellhounds," gardening, cooking, playing the piano, homeopathy, change ringing, and keeping her blog.
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Community Reviews
Rating(4 / 5.0, 99 votes)
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gosh I just love beauty and the beast SO MUCH
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I don't know why I had the urge to reread Beauty, but I'm glad I did. I needed the gentle enchantment of the story and the quiet strength of the various loves that it's really about: Beauty's love for her family, Beauty's love for the Beast, the Beast's love for her, her sisters' love for their partners, Beauty's love of her horse...
It's not laugh-out-loud humorous most of the time, but there's a gentle humour to all of it, and it really made me smile.
The only things that grate on me are the fact that Beauty is supposed to be plain at the beginning and then she becomes beautiful, even though she was perfectly fine as she was, and even though she fell in love with the Beast as the Beast, she ended up marrying a man who she didn't know, and who didn't even know himself if you consider the fact that he doesn't remember his name.
It's not laugh-out-loud humorous most of the time, but there's a gentle humour to all of it, and it really made me smile.
The only things that grate on me are the fact that Beauty is supposed to be plain at the beginning and then she becomes beautiful, even though she was perfectly fine as she was, and even though she fell in love with the Beast as the Beast, she ended up marrying a man who she didn't know, and who didn't even know himself if you consider the fact that he doesn't remember his name.
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There is something about the Beauty and the Beast story that is attractive to society in general and to the literature, movie making crowd in particular. Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, Middlemarch and other books in varying literary quality draw on the motif, subverting, perverting, or simply retelling it (One of my faves is Jane Yolen's version which is a mash up with O Henry's Gift of the Magi). It is no surprise that Robin McKinely was drawn to the tale, twice, and any reader can see the germ of the second novel in this book, her first.
McKinley's writing, in particular The Hero and the Crown, was one very important touchstone of my childrhood, as it seems to be for many fantasy reading women of my age. I can't help but wish that teen girls of today would read her the obessive way and in the vast amount of numbers of those that read Twilight or Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. McKinley writes better, and she will most likely last longer.
This book, McKinley's first and her first retelling of Beauty and the Beast, was totally ripped off by the Walt Disney Company for thier movie. It's actually sad and insulting because not only did Disney rip it off, but they totally shortened the Beauty character (now, before people come and demand my Tigger shirt back, I happen to like the Disney movie, but a spade is a spade. Get over it).
McKinley draws heavily on the French version of the story, yet she makes it her own. Beauty likes to read, but unlike Disney's Belle (Beautiful in French), Beauty reads literature, not the romance novels of her day. Belle's love of reading is based on her love for romantic adventure; Beauty's is based on a love reading for itself and for knowledge. She is a scholar. It is difficult to imagine Disney's Belle having the same reaction to the library in this book, that Beauty does (also, we are never given a title of what Belle reads, hmmm).
Another change that McKinley makes, and she is one of the few authors who does this, is make Beauty's family a loving family. Beauty not only loves her father, but she loves her sisters. She and her sisters get along. They take to each other, not down to each other. They are not in competition. This isn't a fairy tale of the bad sisters being punished and the good (always the young one) being rewarded; it's about a loving family being rewarded.
Because this is early McKinley, there are flaws in the book, flaws that make the reader understand why McKinley basically rewrote the story in Rose Daughter. Beauty, for instance, is almost too perfect. She is the girl who stands out because she is not only more bookish, but more boyish than the other women. This perfection is dealt with in the end sequence. Additionally, Beauty's gaining of Greatheart feels like a wish fullment version of the horse movie of the week. But these are really, almost nit-picking. The most serious flaw is the fact that Beauty's sisters, Grace and Hope, are almost interchangable, though fully likable. McKinley also presents the view that being non-bookish is not any worse than being bookish, which is nice.
What I truly love, now, however, is simply that I only realized when I re-read this book as an adult. Beauty and the Beast from its earliest days was always a story about women and marriage, in particular the fear of marriage that must have developed in a society when the marriages were arranged and husband and wife barely knew each other. McKinley keeps this, and adds, understandably, a fear of desire and of changing into an adult. In many of Beauty's reactions to Beast there is the change of pubertry but also that struggle of coming to terms with adult desire, love, and one's own sexuality.
McKinley's writing, in particular The Hero and the Crown, was one very important touchstone of my childrhood, as it seems to be for many fantasy reading women of my age. I can't help but wish that teen girls of today would read her the obessive way and in the vast amount of numbers of those that read Twilight or Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. McKinley writes better, and she will most likely last longer.
This book, McKinley's first and her first retelling of Beauty and the Beast, was totally ripped off by the Walt Disney Company for thier movie. It's actually sad and insulting because not only did Disney rip it off, but they totally shortened the Beauty character (now, before people come and demand my Tigger shirt back, I happen to like the Disney movie, but a spade is a spade. Get over it).
McKinley draws heavily on the French version of the story, yet she makes it her own. Beauty likes to read, but unlike Disney's Belle (Beautiful in French), Beauty reads literature, not the romance novels of her day. Belle's love of reading is based on her love for romantic adventure; Beauty's is based on a love reading for itself and for knowledge. She is a scholar. It is difficult to imagine Disney's Belle having the same reaction to the library in this book, that Beauty does (also, we are never given a title of what Belle reads, hmmm).
Another change that McKinley makes, and she is one of the few authors who does this, is make Beauty's family a loving family. Beauty not only loves her father, but she loves her sisters. She and her sisters get along. They take to each other, not down to each other. They are not in competition. This isn't a fairy tale of the bad sisters being punished and the good (always the young one) being rewarded; it's about a loving family being rewarded.
Because this is early McKinley, there are flaws in the book, flaws that make the reader understand why McKinley basically rewrote the story in Rose Daughter. Beauty, for instance, is almost too perfect. She is the girl who stands out because she is not only more bookish, but more boyish than the other women. This perfection is dealt with in the end sequence. Additionally, Beauty's gaining of Greatheart feels like a wish fullment version of the horse movie of the week. But these are really, almost nit-picking. The most serious flaw is the fact that Beauty's sisters, Grace and Hope, are almost interchangable, though fully likable. McKinley also presents the view that being non-bookish is not any worse than being bookish, which is nice.
What I truly love, now, however, is simply that I only realized when I re-read this book as an adult. Beauty and the Beast from its earliest days was always a story about women and marriage, in particular the fear of marriage that must have developed in a society when the marriages were arranged and husband and wife barely knew each other. McKinley keeps this, and adds, understandably, a fear of desire and of changing into an adult. In many of Beauty's reactions to Beast there is the change of pubertry but also that struggle of coming to terms with adult desire, love, and one's own sexuality.
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This is a quick read - young adult fiction. There were elements of this story (a re-telling of Beauty and the Beast) that had the potential to be really cool, but the author concentrated on the clothes and hair and food instead of the magic. I'm all for detail, but come on! The main character was labeled "plain" from the beginning and her sisters were beautiful. Of course in the end the plain one becomes pretty and the Beast is also pretty and TA DA all is right with the world. Booo. Also, many many holes in the world the author created. You know they're big if I notice them.
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n -Actual Rating 3.5 Stars-n
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I fell in love with this Beauty and the Beast retelling. Beauty was quirky, and the tone was humorous. I enjoyed how the author wove the details of the fairytale, which aren’t as well known because of the Disney movie, into this retelling, with the Beast proposing marriage every evening, the invisible servants, and the enchanted palace that was always summer.
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This was a good retelling. While it started off a bit slow and the writing isn't too easy to follow, by the middle of the book you get used to it.
I quite liked this retelling of B&B, where Beauty isnt exactly a beauty and her sisters are nice and more beautiful than Beauty and are not ugly inside or out.
I loved Beauty's character development, you see the plain her and see how much she grows confident in herself.
Beast is also an interesting characters, very tamed and nice and thoughtful. It was wonderful to see how their relationship formed and bloomed throughout the book.
I quite liked this retelling of B&B, where Beauty isnt exactly a beauty and her sisters are nice and more beautiful than Beauty and are not ugly inside or out.
I loved Beauty's character development, you see the plain her and see how much she grows confident in herself.
Beast is also an interesting characters, very tamed and nice and thoughtful. It was wonderful to see how their relationship formed and bloomed throughout the book.
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