Beauty

Beauty

Robin McKinley

Published in 1978 by HarperCollins Publishers

Beauty starts off with a young girl that is named Beauty. She has two other sisters and her mother has died so it is only her father is still alive. Her father's business has a horrible disaster occur where they are left with nothing. They travel to a different town to start life over, as a poor family in the country. One day, her father leaves to check on one of the ships that was lost in the disaster. He comes back telling a tale of how he had come upon an enchanted castle and had tried to pick a rose for Beauty because that is what she had asked for when he left. The beast, the master of that castle, took him and told him that he had to give him one of his daughters or he would take him instead. Beauty volunteers to go to the Beast and take him up on his offer. She goes to the castle and learns to love the beast. In the end, she decides that she truly does love the beast and he is turned back into a man and they are married. 

I liked this book alright. It wasn't one of my favorites because it seemed pretty cheesy and just like another one of those fairy tales that are told a million times. I did like the characters in it though. I liked Beauty the best because she didn't really care that she wasn't as beautiful as her other sisters, she just knew that she could make up for it in other ways and she believed in herself to do things that she needed to do to help her family and to be happy. She was a strong character and I loved her for it. I liked the arrangement of the story. It was like Beauty and the Beast but a little bit different and I liked it but I feel like this kind of story is told all the time but it was told well, even if it was a little cheesy.