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Loading... Beastby Donna Jo Napoli
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. deslivres5 | May 4, 2009 |   The class story of Beauty and the Beast told from the Beast's point of view starting from the curse until he finds a women who can love him. The main character is the Beast and he is well developed in his Persian identity and how becoming a lion changes him. The plot is well developed and although is just Orasmyn for about half the book, his struggles with how to remain human while a lion is intriguing. The changing setting from the deserts of Persia to the safari of India to the mountains of France are all well developed and easy to picture as the reader follows Orasmyn on his journey. This is a great view of the story of Beauty and the Beast for the tales lovers, also for slightly more romantic boys since the story is from a male point of view. It is an excellent book for a public library in the teen section for mature middle school readers and high schoolers. (  )msulibraryfreak | Oct 20, 2008 | This is a story of a Shah's son from Persia who improperly allows a camel to be sacrificed. In revenge, a pari (Persian fairy) turns the man into a lion. The only way to remove the curse is to have a woman fall in love with him. Conveienced that this will never happen, the lion goes to India to live as a lion. Unable to live in a pride, the man must face the reality that his only hope is to find a french woman who loves roses just as much as he does. I didn't particuarly like this book. I felt it was a little long. The writing was good but uneven. The first part of the book is dedicated to the main character living as a lion. I felt this part of the book could have been much shorter. The author feels the need to document every kill. The end feels almost forced, as though the author needed to finish up the story and didn't want to spend too much time on it. It's an okay read, but not what I had expected. (  )snapdragongirl | Jul 27, 2008 | Read this while I was quite sick, and have vague impressions of it. I enjoyed it, I think, but even though it's only been a day or two I can't really remember anything about it. I'll have to re-read this later when I'm not drugged up. I remember being surprised by the Islamic influences, but liking the Persian prince quite a bit more than a traditional French prince. (  )valkylee | Nov 21, 2007 | This is the tale of The Beast -- that is, what happened to him before he met Beauty. The world is so vividly depicted I could amost see and taste the world Donna Jo Napoli describes. I wish there was such great Teen Fiction being published when I was a teenager! (  )ryner | Feb 3, 2007 | 0.051 seconds to build listing  no reviews | add a review
Amazon.com (ISBN 0689835906, Paperback)In a narrative as glittering and richly detailed as a Persian miniature, Donna Jo Napoli interprets and amplifies the tale of Beauty and the Beast with startling originality. We've seen her keen psychological insights, surprising viewpoints, and clever twists on traditional fairy tales in previous novels: Hansel and Gretel in The Magic Circle, Rapunzel in Zel, Jack and the Beanstalk in Crazy Jack, and Rumpelstiltskin in Spinners. Here she uses the intriguing setting of ancient Persia in a glorious retelling of the now-Disneyfied favorite--a bold undertaking with which authors from Robin McKinley to Francesca Lia Block have also challenged themselves.Napoli, however, brings a fresh slant to the story through the eyes of the Beast, Prince Orasmyn, who has been transformed by a curse into a lion--and can only be redeemed by the love of a woman. From this four-footed perspective, the young prince struggles to learn how to survive as a beast while retaining his humanity in devotion to Islamic moral principles. Fleeing his father's hunting park, he travels as an animal across Asia to France, where he at last finds an abandoned chateau. There, using paws and jaws, he plants a rose garden and prepares the castle for the woman he hopes will come to love him. Enter the merchant, the plucked rose, the brave Beauty, and the story wends to its traditional end--but this time with compassion and a new vividness. Into this sumptuous tapestry Napoli has woven a wealth of lore about Persian literature, the tenets of Islam, rose culture, animal behavior--even a leonine mating scene. This level of detail makes for a leisurely pace and a novel that may be more appropriate for older teens who are willing to savor the journey rather than the destination. After all, we all know how the story ends. (Ages 14 and older) --Patty Campbell (retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:58:17 -0400) The first test round has been closed. Visit the Open Shelves Classification group for details. |
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Beast tells the story of Belle and the Beast falling in love under extreme circumstances a castle in France, but the beginning of Napoli's tale starts in Persia with the son of the Shah and his beastly curse being handed down by a djinn.
The language is lovely, the Beasts travels from Persia to France a bit heart breaking and the Islamic insights add lots of interest in this retelling. (