Beauty and the Beast

Grade 3 Up-Traditionalists will not find this retelling of the classic tale to their liking. McCaughrean dispenses with the scene-setting introduction of the original tale that takes Beauty's father from wealth to ruin and provides the reason for his arrival at Beast's palace. She begins, instead, on a cloudy night when a man named Gregor, traveling on horseback, glimpses the rooms of a palace in a fragment of mirror on the forest floor and is magically transported there. Inside, the man, who is Beauty's father, discovers breathtaking opulence, great gilded mirrors filled with cracks, and statues blindfolded with scarves of silk. He offers Beast some of his wealth in exchange for the rose he has picked. In the denouement, Beauty returns to her dying Beast and the spell is broken, the palace melts "like winter ice" and disappears. Blythe's artistic talent is evident in his full-page color scenes and in his pencil drawings and vignettes, but there is nothing classical about the appearance of Beauty and her father or their clothing. His Beast has a grotesque, misshapen, hairless face with deeply sunken eyes and small pointy ears. Readable as it is, the story has been so abbreviated and changed that it lacks several classic elements that are essential to the fairy-tale genre: the style of the storyteller, the triumph of good over evil, and a clear lesson of life. Marianna and Mercer Mayer's version (SeaStar, 2000) more closely parallels the original and is accompanied by exceptional romantic illustrations that are appropriate to the story.
Susan Scheps, Shaker Heights Public Library, OH
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The distinguished author and Greenaway Medal-winning illustrator disappoint with this chilly treatment of a cherished fairy tale. In McCaughrean's (My First Oxford Book of Stories) telling, Beauty is never afraid of the Beast and happily issues him invitations to join her; her sisters like her and want to protect her; and when she goes home, she nearly forgets about the Beast. These changes drain some of the drama from the original, while ornate prose further cushions the tensions of the plot (e.g., the moon "was a smoking mirror [that] disappeared behind a monstrous paw of cloud"). Blythe (The Whales' Song), meanwhile, contributes illustrations in two different styles. Black-and-white drawings, most of them serving as spot art, suggest traditional fairy-tale settings, such as tangled forests or meadows in full flower. But his full-page paintings have the hard-edged, futuristic look of a CD-ROM game. The supposedly sumptuous castle seems cold and arid, even ominous. Beauty herself appears very young, more girl than bride. All in all, a jarring presentation. Ages 5-8. (Oct.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.