To Read & To Write

Robin McKinley’s retelling of “Beauty and the Beast” is a must-read for anyone who loves and knows fairy tales. McKinley’s version, titled “Beauty”, was written in 1978, and does not stray too far away from the original French tale, “La Belle et la Bête”, written by Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve in 1740. In fact, it pays homage to the original story, and captures its magic wonderfully. Because Disney’s animated “Beauty and the Beast”, released in 1991, made such a huge impact on me during my childhood (I was four!) this chapter book meant *so* much when I first read it in the sixth grade, and upon re-reading it as a grad student, I was very much impressed that the book had not lost any of its sublime qualities. A large portion of the power of McKinley’s “Beauty” lies in her descriptions. The Beast’s castle is especially breathtaking, and the reader is pulled into the story for pages and pages. Every turn in the plot, every part of each scene, every angle of a personality,...