Beauty : A Retelling of the Story of Beauty and the Beast

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Summary: A wonderful book!
Review: I really enjoyed this book & end up rereading it every few years. A classic!

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Summary: Enchanting Story
Review: What a wonderful book! Beautifully written with Beauty as a real person, not some simpy little plaster saint as she is portrayed in the fairy tale. Romantic without bad taste, makes you smile for days after reading it!

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Summary: 4 1/2 stars
Review: I love this great retelling of Beauty and the Beast and all of its details. The only reason I did not give this book 5 stars is because there did not seem to be enough romance, and the end seems a bit awkward and unrealistic, and fast. Other than that, this is great book for teenagers who like fairy tales! I recommend buying the book, I'm going to the first chance I get!

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Summary: The best version of Beauty & The Beast that I know of!
Review: I love this book and have re-read it many times. Beauty is a refreshing heroine - intelligent, stubborn, and completely believable. The other characters are also much more "real" than many fairy-tale characters are, allowing the reader to relate to them in a way that makes the entire story acceptable.

To describe the story would make it seem standard fare, but the way it's written makes it so much better than you might expect. If you find Disney's Beauty & The Beast a bit saccharine, try this book as an antidote.

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Summary: Fairytale magic strikes again!
Review: Contrary to Donna Jo Napoli's Beast, Robin McKinley's Beauty shows a more practical, feminine side to this well-loved tale. Beauty & the Beast has been kicked around by more authors and film-makers than anyone would care to count, but still its messages remain as potent as ever in a society that longs to conquer every single part of the dark, enchanted forest, and would explore every single room in the enchanted castle if given the opportunity.
Tales like Beauty & the Beast symbolize our greatest human weaknesses and fears. They celebrate our hopes and dreams and bring to light facets of our humanity that we examine every day (and a few features we'd rather not examine). In the "olden days" when these stories were first created, the people who read them had no trouble at all relating to the events and the people they read about. In today's world, we can still relate to the core of the story, the moral, but can no longer correlate to those out-dated story lines. Many thanks goes to McKinley, and her fellow writers, for bringing these antique fairytales back into contemporary society, with a little bit of polish and a whole lot of elbow grease, to make a tale that is not quite forgotten ring true once again.

I have given Beauty 4 stars because, although the book in it's entirety was written quite well, I was disappointed at it's ending. In my opinion, this "grand finale" seemed rushed, while at the same time giving too many details. If it had ended 3 pages sooner, it would've been fine, but it wouldn't have been a bad idea either to build up suspense for the outcome. As a reader, I like to jump in all the puddles that the previous rain of foreshadowing had promised me. It may be that my disappointment lies only in that I knew what would happen to Beauty and the Beast (almost everyone does), and so I kind of missed the mark and jumped OVER all those finale puddles. But anyway, at least the ending was a happy one, even if it was predictable.

If you're a fairy-tale fanatic like me, or just like your good old-fashioned fantasy-romance, then you'll love reading Beauty. Under titles of this same genre, I'd also recommend any of Donna Jo Napoli's novels- they're really something else!

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Summary: A Delightful Retelling of "Beauty & the Beast"
Review: This book is a delightful retelling of the Beauty and the Beast fairytale. However, don't assume that you know everything there is to know about this story already. In this version, Beauty is plain compared to her two elder sisters ... and the beast is more sad and mysterious than frightening or beastly.

Closer to the original French fairytale than any version so far, the style of writing has an old-fashioned charm and simplicity about it, giving you the feeling that you are reading a letter from Beauty herself describing her life at the beast's enchanted castle.

This book would make a wonderful gift for girls aged nine to ninety!