Common Sense Note
The prince suffers for misdeeds, though they were well intended, and thinks deeply about his actions. Contains words and information from a variety of traditions and religions.
Beautifully written, clever angle on a familiar story. The pacing picks up in the second half.
Common Sense Review
Reviewed By: Matt Berman
Donna Jo Napoli has made something of a specialty of reinterpreting traditional fairy tales in the form of young-adult novels (see also Zel and Crazy Jack, among others). Here she tackles a story that seems to fascinate YA authors--Beauty and the Beast.
As Napoli explains in a note, her story is based on an 1811 poem by Charles Lamb, which specifies that the Beast was originally a Persian prince. This gives her the opportunity to weave satisfying doses of Persian culture and religious practices into the story, and to contrast them with the practices he finds in France.
The slow pace will not be to the taste of all teens, especially during the prince's wanderings in the first half of the novel. Once he is in France the pace quickens a bit, but even with the inclusion of some bestial violence and sex, this is still more a thoughtful mood piece than an action-adventure, as befits the original story, which Disney had to soup up with talking tableware to make it appeal to younger viewers. But for those with patience, this is a beautifully told tale that brings new understanding to the original.
Teens who enjoy this often like other versions of this story, such as Beauty, Rose Daughter and The Rose and the Beast. Other excellent retold fairy tales include Briar Rose and Ella Enchanted.
Plot Summary:
When proud Prince Orasmyn of Persia knowingly allows a flawed camel to be sacrificed to Muhammad at the Feast of Sacrifices, a spirit places a curse on him that causes him to live as a lion until a woman loves him.
Fleeing from his father's hunting party, he travels first to India and lives there, learning the ways of lions. Eventually he makes his way to France, where he takes over an abandoned castle.
There he lives alone, a beast with the mind of a man, until a traveling merchant shelters in his castle during a storm. The man tears a branch off one of the prince's rose bushes, angering the prince into confronting him.
The man is terrified, but the prince, seeing an opportunity to lift the curse, demands that the man give up his daughter in exchange for his life.
Includes author's note and glossary.
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Sexual ContentSeveral sexual references, lust, and animal mating. |
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ViolenceGraphic depictions of hunting and butchering. The prince is trapped in a lion's body and hunted. |
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