Beauty - Robin McKinley

Fantasy seems to go in trends, and the current trend is the retelling of familiar fairytales. I like this twist on Beauty and the Beast. What if Beauty wasn’t her name or her face? What if Beauty was a nickname that was an ironic curse? What if her older sisters were Grace and Hope and they fit their names perfectly? But how do you explain Honour to a 5 year old? And when she didn’t understand her name and says she would rather be Beauty, would you start calling her that? How would you change it if she wasn’t a Beauty? If you were plain and called Beauty, wouldn’t going to a strange castle (much bigger than the shack you were living in) be a wonderful escape, especially if you loved to read and it had an open library?

McKinley does a wonderful job of weaving a story both familiar and strange. At least it doesn’t have the flavor of the Disney movie.