Book Synopsis:
MinaLima, the award-winning design studio behind the graphics for the Harry Potter film franchise and the creators of the illustrated Jungle Book and Peter Pan, reimagine the beloved French fairy tale The Beauty and the Beast in this deluxe unabridged edition illustrated with stunning full-color artwork and nine 3-D interactive features—published to coincide with the release of the blockbuster Disney live-action musical film starring Emma Watson, Ian McKellen, Josh Gad, Ewan McGregor, and Emma Thompson.
Generations of readers have been bewitched by the epic love story of a beautiful young girl imprisoned in the magical castle of a monstrous beast. Now, the classic fairy tale is brought to life in this spectacular illustrated edition as originally envisioned by Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve in 1740.
My Review:
Belle is one of my favorite Disney princesses, so I was excited to read the original fairytale of Beauty and the Beast to see how it compares to the Disney movie. It's a pretty different story, but I still enjoyed it a lot. Despite all of the old fashioned language and writing style, I was still mostly able to follow what was happening. The MinaLima art in this edition was nice, but I felt like the 3D elements were there just to have them and didn't really add anything to the reading experience.
The lengthy writing immediately stuck out to me. There were so many unnecessary commas and run-on sentences. I don't know if that's the fault of the time period it was written, the translation from French to English, or just the fairytale style, but it was definitely distracting. Added on to that were a lot of words that no one uses in everyday conversation anymore.
Like I already said, though, I was still mostly able to follow the plot. It got a bit more confusing toward the end, when all the stuff with the different fairies got introduced, but the rest of it made sense. The story in this one is very different from the Disney movie in a lot of ways, but it wasn't worse. There were some aspects of this one that I loved. Some people say Beauty and the Beast is Stockholm Syndrome - I disagree - but this story doesn't have that as much, if at all.
The love Beauty and the Beast had for each other was also very cute. It was pretty sudden and bordered on insta-love (at least with Beast's feelings for Beauty) but it's a fairytale so it's allowed to be. There was also the fact that Beauty and the Beast were cousins, which is weird, but forgivable considering the time it was written.
Beauty and the Beast might be one of the first love triangles in literature. It was more creative than a love triangle, though, because there were really only two people the whole time. In this story, Beauty is visited by a handsome prince every night in her dreams, and she instantly falls for him. Later on, though, she has some feelings for Beast and agrees to marry him, feeling guilty for abandoning her prince. She finds out at the end that the prince in her dreams was the Beast's true form. I thought that was kind of cool.
Another thing with the writing style was that it was very much telling instead of showing. It makes sense because it's a fairytale, but that made the story move much slower. There were two chapters before the last chapter that were purely expositional, as every single event and detail of how things came to be in the story got revealed. It was all interesting information, but it was two back-to-back chapters with nothing but exposition and no actual forward movement.
The edition of the story I was reading was the MinaLima version, which add illustrations and 3D elements. I thought the art was nice, but the 3D elements were underwhelming. There were some flaps to open and some things to turn, but there wasn't anything that was super cool to me.
Finally, I loved the very last sentence of the book. The last sentence is: "They also disseminated copies of it throughout the universe, so that the world at large might never cease to talk of the wonderful adventures of Beauty and the Beast." In the context of the story, it's talking about the characters sharing the story to others, but it really feels like an ode to the fairytale itself and classic stories in general. In real life, world today hasn't ceased to talk about their wonderful adventures. That line was just very beautiful to me
Content:
Absolutely nothing. This is a super clean book. There's not even any romantic embraces or kissing.
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