Beauty and the Beast

by Mahlon F. Craft, Kinuko Y. Craft (Illustrator)

Overview

Award-winning team Mahlon and Kinuko Craft bring us a gorgeous and vivid retelling of the classic story of Beauty and the Beast in this stunningly illustrated picture book.

The tale is as old as time: A man steals a rose from the garden of a beast. His beautiful daughter sacrifices herself to a life in the beast’s castle to protect her father. The beast and the girl fall in love and live happily ever after…

This beloved tale is captured with lyrical prose and lavish illustration. In the spirit of the Crafts’ previous collaborations, their acclaimed fairy-tale retellings of Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty, this timeless tale is brought to life with sumptuous paintings and ornamental detail in this lush picture book to be cherished at story time again and again. 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780060539191
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	07/26/2016
Pages:	32
Product dimensions:	9.20(w) x 11.10(h) x 0.60(d)
Age Range:	4 - 8 Years

About the Author

Mahlon F. Craft came to writing late in life. Beauty and the Beast is his second published work as an author. He is a graduate of the Art Academy of Cincinnati. After completing postgraduate studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in the 1960s, he worked as an award-winning art director and graphic designer. Beauty and the Beast is the ninth picture book of his design.

Kinuko Y. Craft has won more than one hundred graphic-arts awards, including five gold medals from the Society of Illustrators. In 2008, she was inducted into their Hall of Fame. Her art has been in print for almost half a century, appearing on the covers of such prestigious publications as Time and Newsweek. Her illustrated books on Greek myths and of classic fairy tales have been published in the United States and other English-language countries, and in Europe, China, and Korea. Says Kirkus Reviews, "Every detail of her work—the flowers by a spring, a red cloak unfurled against a blue sky, moonlight on a tiger's back—is beautifully rendered." Beauty and the Beast is her ninth illustrated book.

Editorial Reviews

Effectively captures the mystery and magic of this tale in lyrical language. The illustrations are nothing short of gorgeous. There is a certain misty luminosity that carries readers into this forest of illusion. — School Library Journal

From the Publisher

2016-04-13
Lush, intricate oil paintings distinguish this retelling of Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont's 18th-century version of the familiar fairy tale.While the Beast is present, lurking behind Beauty, on the jacket, the intricately detailed paintings do far more to emphasize beauty than beastliness. Almost each recto holds an illustration, laden with decorative embellishments in setting, characters' dress, and the material culture of the setting, while the facing versos are text-heavy with Mahlon Craft's retelling, which is laid out with ornate historiated initials. Exceptions to this design arise at full, wordless double-page spreads punctuating the verbal narration at key points in the tale: when Beauty first rides to Beast's castle; when she enjoys the splendors there; when she cradles the near-dead Beast in her arms. These moments highlight Beauty as the protagonist even though Beast is the one who transforms at book's end, when his blond, rosy appearance confirms an all-white cast of characters. Indeed, apart from his jacket appearance, he appears in beast form only three times. This speaks to a pacing problem in the book: lengthy blocks of text covering lots of narrative ground seem at odds with the finite moments depicted in the facing illustrations. While the gorgeous intricacy of the illustrations invites poring over, readers may miss details from the text that are excluded from the art.A beautiful retelling that may well daunt readers accustomed to the far shorter picture-book texts of today. (Picture book. 6-10)

Kirkus Reviews