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Summary: The Rose and the Beast
Review: The book The rose and the beast is about a girl named rose who grows up with a beast . She learns how to do may things. The beast loves her and she loves him. As the girl grows up, she gets more and more gifts from the beast's friends. She also startes talking to some anmilams like they are real people.
She was always crying because her mother had to give her away. The mother was not aloud to help the girl. Shecould not raise her the right way; the way she deserved to be raise. Her mother workes at a house for the owners who lived their. The girlnever got to meet her mom face to face. She only saw her from a distance because she was scared her mom would not know who she was.
My opinion on the book is that the book is a really good book. The book remined me of some one whoi feeles lost in the world and has no place to go. I got this book as a gift frim a teacher and the moment that I got it I started reading it and did not put it down untill I was done.
I would recommend this book to everyone because not only is it a good book it is also easy to read if u dont like to read. It is not that long and also not that short of a book.
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Summary: I just keep buying this book!
Review: The fairy tale worlds of Francesca Lia Block's The Rose and the Beast: Fairy Tales Retold are not the worlds of Disney -- they're a whole lot cooler. In this collection of nine short stories, Block has taken some of the traditional princess-fare, such as Snow White and Cinderella, and crafted them into new classics that are both raw and beautiful.
Block, the author of the bestselling Weetzie Bat books, has chosen to "retell" a varied set of tales here. From her newly askew version of Snow White in "Snow," to the abused-yet-radiant Red Riding Hood of "Wolf," to the lesser known heroines of "Ice" and "Bones," these girls and women have all been infused with a power that has until now been left to the boys and princes. Snow makes up her own mind who to live with -- and it's not a foredrawn conclusion that there's always a Prince waiting to ride in on his big horse. Sometimes, as in the haunting Sleeping Beauty-meets-heroin tale "Charm," the saviour Prince may be a Princess instead.
Besides the refreshing women-centric angles of these stories, it is Block's prose that sets them apart from the average fairytale. From "Glass":"He had dense curls and soft full hips and bright eyes like a woodland beast and a
body of lithe muscle and mostly she could see he was gentle like a boy though he
could lift her in his hands. He held her and she felt his hard chest and stomach
and hipbones and she felt his strong heart beating like the sound of all the
stories she could tell." Here, Block proves that she has not abandoned the fairytale romance, she has simply taken it out of the realm of singing animals and woven it into her heroine's heart.
This collection of short stories made me want to write. It also sent me out to buy copies for all my friends. It's that darn good.
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Summary: Another of Blocks wonderful work
Review: The only reason i had purchased this book was 1. It was written by Francesca Lia Block and 2. It was about fairy tales. But when i read it i realized that if it had been i 12 font type and single spaced the book woul have consisted of 50 pages at the most. Even with the short length of th book it was excellent. Although some of the fairy-tales re-told i could not realize what tales they were refering to. But besides that it was an excelent read.
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Summary: Surreal and poetic
Review: The Rose and the Beast is a generally remarkable collection of updated fairy tales that, while sometimes sharply urban, maintain a dreamy, distant, fairy tale feel. It's almost magical realism: magic seems possible in this alternate, nearly familiar, perilous world. Beasts in castles still exist, with no explanation or apology to the rational world; so do people the size of thumbs. And zebras and boots thrown in with the traditional glass slippers and roses. Francesca Lia Block manages to keep these disparate elements from clashing too badly. And yet, the strongest stories are the ones that don't have literal magic play a major role. The integration of actual beasts and tiny people seems just a tad ludicrous; a more metaphorical reading of the original stories might have been more effective, especially in the case of "Tiny." The abusive boyfriend and child molester in "Wolf" is much more menacing than an actual wolf would have been *because* he exists in our world, and not merely between the pages of a fairy tale, to be banished with the closing of the book. My favorites in the collection tend to be those that expand upon the original fairy tales, using them only as framework within which to explore underlying emotions and different readings. "Glass" is an especially good example. The actual plot is skimped over-- the vast majority of readers are already familiar with Cinderella-- but its reflections on why Cinderella never ran away from her drudgery are the real point of the story. And it has the most evocative, brilliant imagery in the book. The collection can be somewhat uneven, but most of the stories are worth reading for the atmospheric prose, which is lyrical and yet concise, vividly descriptive, and very unique. The lack of quotation marks throughout creates a curiously surreal and hushed sensation. While I personally favor Vivian Vande Velde's wickedly funny and inventive retellings of "Rumpelstiltskin," and Robin McKinley and Patricia A. McKillip's versions of "The Twelve Dancing Princesses," The Rose and the Beast is a worthy book, especially for the older teens and adults who never tired of fairy tales. Ailanna
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Summary: Fairy Tales Retold
Review: The Rose and the Beast is an amazing collection of nine classic fairy tales retold in modern Los Angeles. Francesca Lia Block uses the same kind of beautiful imagery and metaphors thaaaat made the Weetzie Bat series and her other books modern classics. Some of the retold stories include Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Thumblina, and Cinderella. It's not always easy to tell what every sstory is based on, but it doesn't take away from them at all. I reccomend this book to everyone becuase I think everyone will love it.
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Summary: Rose and the Beast
Review: The Rose and the Beast, by Francesca Lia Block is a collection of nine retold fairy tales. The tales are twisted around a little and given new meanings. For example, Sleeping Beauty pricks herself with a heroin needle as opposed to a spinning needle and Snow White was the unwanted child of an under aged mother. All are set in modern times, and most take place in and around the Los Angeles, California.
It was strange reading fairy tales from my childhood, but having it written out as they relate to my life. That's the thing I loved about the book, I could relate to every story in it. All the themes applied to my everyday life and my life in the long run. Some common themes were friendship, love, being unwanted, wanted, abused, being different than the crowd, and over coming deep secrets and scars that have happened in your life. For example in Charm or "Sleeping Beauty", Rev (Sleeping Beauty) was a model and was abused and given heroin (the spinning needle) by her photographer (the evil fairy). She had to come over those experiences and in the end found a long lost friend (the Prince) who used to model with her and overcame her own problems and helped Rev.
Another theme I mentioned was love, which was probably the most reoccurring theme through all nine stories. One good example is when Tiny (Thumbalina) sets off on a quest to find this boy she fell in love with when he was spying on her mother. In the end she finds him and he realizes she is the "inspiration" he's been looking for (he's a "starving" poet) and accepts that she's only the size of his thumb and sees who she really is, beyond her size. That can relate to your own life pretty easily, you have to look beyond what people look like in life. You could be missing out on a lot if you prejudge people by their outside appearance.
In conclusion I'd say this is a great book and everyone should read it. Because there's no big plot if you didn't get one chapter it doesn't affect the rest of the book. I think everyone should read it, and I can see myself reading it over and over and over again. You will be missing out if you miss this great collection of "real life" fantasy.
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Summary: almost wonderous
Review: this book has everything that's classic about Francesca Lia Block's work: the poetry, the L.A. setting, the unique characters ... all woven together into a collection of stories that are at once familiar to us,and, through Block's writing, brand new. She made these tales her own, drawing from their traditional tellings, but adding a twist here and there to freshen them up. While some of Block's other books such as Dangerous Angels and The Hanged Man still outshine this novel, it is a great improvement over her more recent works of Violet and Claire and especially Nymph. I enjoyed it alot.
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Summary: MORE THAN 5 STARS!
Review: This book was beautiful Thats all I can say. In some parts it made me smile, others cry. In the story of Wolf (Red Riding Hood) it is so tragic but tender......there are no words to explain this book!It truly tells you the meaning of life and love.
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Summary: Magic. There. +points at book+
Review: This book was beautiful. And even though the stories were extremely abstract, that just added to it... I loved it. {I think I'll end up rating every FLB book 5 stars :)}
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Summary: Good short stories by Francesca Lia Block
Review: This book was interesting and beautifully written. They are all short stories retelling of the classic fairty tales. They are all fairly short but very interesting. Snow was a retelling of Snow White and the intention of the story is one I found to be a perfect ending. Ice was a beautiful story in the retelling of The Snow Queen about soul mates and being in love. Being in true love. Beast was my personal favorite. It's alot like Beauty and the Beast but the ending makes a funny yet very understandable ending for girls who have been in relationships before. Bones was VERY hard to follow and I'm sure I even understand it completely now. Other stories include Tiny, Glass (beautiful work by Francesca may I add), Charm, Wolf, and Rose. If you're a fan of Francesca Lia Block's work or of fairy tales, then this book is worth a good read
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