Lovely illustrations, though it's not my favorite retelling. ( )

The classic French fairy-tale of Beauty and the Beast is here retold by British children's author Rosemary Harris - winner of the Carnegie Medal in 1968 for her biblical fantasy, The Moon in the Cloud - and Kate Greenaway Medal-winning illustrator Errol Le Cain. With such a line-up, you'd expect this retelling to be top-notch - I certainly did, after adoring Le Cain's artwork for Cupid and Psyche, and I invested in a copy for my collection accordingly. Unfortunately, although this title does have some modest charm, and will be of interest to those readers who enjoy (as I do) examining multiple retellings of their favorite fairy-tales, it doesn't even come close to being amongst the better Beauty and the Beast adaptations I have seen.

I found some of Harris' narrative decisions here rather odd, and wondered a bit at her sources - no author's note is included, and there is no attribution of any kind, although the colophon for this (American) edition at least includes a "Folklore-France" subject designation - as it seemed to me that much of the magic of the original has been subtly altered, to make the tale more religious. When the merchant finds himself in the Beast's palace, he wonders where the "master" can be, never concluding (as he does in the French original) that this must be the residence of a good fairy. Similarly, when Beauty first comes to the palace, rather than having a comforting dream in which a good fairy assures her of her eventual reward, she instead dreams that God is pleased with her. Other minor details have also been altered - the Beast suggests that the merchant pray to God, when he is threatening to kill him; the jealous sisters (who are named Pride and Vanity in this telling) are sternly judged by the Prince, in the end, rather than the by all-knowing fairy - all resulting in the same curious deletion: the fairy has disappeared from this fairy-tale!

It's odd... I don't know enough about Harris, as an author or woman, to venture even a guess as to why these change were made. It could be anything from the use of an alternate nineteenth-century source that had a healthy dose of Victorian religiosity (the Victorians were often very concerned about the possibly deleterious effects of fairy-tales), to a personal religious conviction of the part of the author, that somehow necessitated these changes. It's hard to judge - I think I'd have to track down more of Harris' work, in order to decide. But whatever the case may be, when it comes to motivation, I didn't care for the resultant narrative, in which the sole figure of female authority in the story is removed. Errol Le Cain's artwork had its moments of enchantment, although it certainly wasn't the equal of the work he has done in other titles, but it simply wasn't enough to lift this above the level of a flawed, but moderately enjoyable retelling. Recommended primarily to Beauty and the Beast fanatics, and to Errol Le Cain fans. ( )